18 | Winter 2022
FA C T C H E C K
It Was Hip to Say Back Then, But Which Generation’s Slang Really is the GOAT? KATE NEELEY
contributing writer
Clayton, a 14-year-old student at Spring Creek Middle School in Providence, has the skinny on what’s cool to say if you’re a Gen-Z-er like he is. And, according to him, you really need to be qualified to use current slang phrases. He relates, “When older people or adults say things like ‘That’s gucci’ [meaning that’s really cool] or stuff like that, it just seems weird, like they’re trying to be a teenager.” Top slang terms and phrases Clayton likely hears in the hall every day include: • GOAT (abbreviation for Greatest Of All Time) or GOATED (In a sentence: He is SO goated!)
• Stop the cap! (What you’re talking about is unimportant OR You are kidding me!) • Yeet (To throw something is to “yeet” it) • Flex (To show off) • Lit (Similar to GOAT — if something is ‘lit,’ it’s basically the best thing) There are plenty more of those terms, but as slang goes, it won’t be long before it changes or becomes so mainstream that you don’t think it's slang at all. For example, do you really even think twice when you use words like “cool,” “awesome,” or “OK?” In the late 70s in America, “awesome”
started to become popular to use for describing something really great — but previous to what most understand as its meaning today, it was understood to mean something more along the lines of “awful.” ‘Awesome’ isn’t the only word that got a glowup over time. It seems to be a trend for words that mean something in everyday conversation to become slang and in the process gain a new meaning exactly opposite to what it meant before. Lauren Wood, a Cache Valley resident and a millennial (born between 1980 and 1996), in
