Odd English words are doing the rounds

The English language is a beautiful thing if you hear it spoken correctly by native English speakers. Most will use Cambridge and Oxford educated individuals as prime examples of well-spoken words. But there have always been two distinct forms of English. The posh kind and the cockney accent riddled with cockney rhyming slang.

The age-old slang that most British English speakers are aware of are phrases like 'trouble and strife' for wife, 'plates of meat' for feet, 'dog and bone' for phone, 'mince pies' for eyes and to 'take a gander’ for ‘to take a look’. There are, of course others, that are often mistaken for slang but they're not.

A very good example is 'mind your Ps and Qs'. This is a generally accepted idiom where the 'P' stands for 'pleases' and the 'Q' for 'thank yous'. Even the most educated person might use this idiom, but they'd never use slang except in jest.

But sadly the English language is evolving, and not in a good way. Whereas in times gone by the evolution seemed acceptable because it made sense, nowadays new slang and strange vernacular has arisen mostly at the hands of little kids in school or teens with nothing better to do.

I'm still irritated by the term 'ghosting'. Since when did it become an acceptable term to describe someone who disappears on you? To be honest I'm astonished that grown adults, who may or may not be educated, are using it instead of being blunt and saying that the person stopped responding to my communications! They will say 'why use 10 words when 1 will do? But who gave these people the right to butcher a language?

When I first noticed ghost being used as a verb, as in 'ghosting' I had to look it up thinking it was a person who'd passed away and was still around, so to speak. But that's not the only slang whose meaning people are looking up. Now there are so many odd ones that make little to no sense, that it’s no wonder people have to look them up. They sound like made up words but then one might argue that all words that are spoken in any language are made up words. However, at some point these words stop sounding like they’re made up. But in the case of those new age ones being looked up, they sound more made up than usual. Most words are now made up and in use because they’ve become the common vernacular of children. Do we, as adults, want to adopt this vernacular, one that makes no sense? I wouldn’t; kids are stupid!

Here are some examples.

Sigma used to describe an independent, self-reliant individual who operates outside normal social hierarchies. To me this sounds like they’re referring to someone who they think is a weirdo.

‘6,7’ is used to refer to someone who’s a ‘nothing’, ‘nobody’ or ‘average’. Apparently these numbers, because it’s not a word, originates from some song by some rapper called skrilla! So skrilla is now contributing to the English language!

Mogging, no not mugging, but mogging, is used when you outclass someone else by looking prettier or doing better than him or her.

Green FN is a basketball term and means a guaranteed win. Instead of saying something is a guaranteed win, kids these days are just saying that it’s a Green FN.

And kids are not averse to being unpleasant and that is also showing in some of the terms they’ve coined. For example, ‘clanker’ has been coined to refer to AI and robots. It’s meant to be used in a derogatory sense, much like referring to a very old troublesome car being referred to as ‘the old banger’.

Similarly someone who has a large physique is now being referred to as ‘Big Back’ which, in my opinion, is more derogatory because now it refers to a person.

They’ve even taken perfectly good words, such as ‘delusional’ and abbreviated it to something absurd, like Delulu.

And for some time now, although after 1995, kids have been referring to the British Police as ‘the Feds’. I reckon this has been adopted from the American FBI.