A Guide to Understanding Today's Slang

​Our discussion taught me the following:

​​Slay: This can be a verb or an adjective used to refer to something as great, cool or amazing.​

​Rizz: This refers to someone with good charisma.​

​It’s giving: This is used to say the vibe is giving, without saying precisely what it is giving. The meaning is inferred from the situation.​

​IYKYK: If you know, you know. I know this is taking language to the extreme nonsensical.​

​Tea: This refers to gossip, as in “What’s the tea?” Obviously, this meaning has nothing to do with liquid in a cup, but it may amount to a measured scoop.​

​Bougee: This means rich, luxurious, expensive or fancy.​

​Simp: To go above and beyond for someone you like, who often doesn’t like you in return.

​Sus: When someone or something is suspicious or suspect.​

​I took notes the old-fashioned way — with pen and paper — and soon, my grandkids lost patience. My granddaughter said, “I was giving,” shook her head and left the table. To this day, I still don’t know quite what I was giving, but it was intense enough to send her fleeing to her room. ​

​​Left with an arsenal of slang that still needed defining, I resorted to other methods to learn the slang my grandkids use today. These are pretty good tools available to help you, too: ​

​​1. Eavesdropping – The best place for this is in the car. It’s strange how a gaggle of teens will talk about anything and everything as if their driver has no hearing abilities. Sometimes, I hear things I’d rather not, but mostly, I listen and pick up on the slang. For years, I was a Gruber Driver – Granny + Uber, and during those years, I felt pretty dope.​

​2. Google - The internet has endless amounts of information, though not all is reliable. But for slang, you’ll get the gist from many different sources. Once you find the meaning of perplexing slang, you can search for how it is used in a sentence — and by whom. My youngest grandchild doesn’t use the same words as my eldest, and vice versa. Slang is particular to age and activities.

​​3. Study Word Origins – Several examples of today’s slang are just shortening or redirecting a regular word. For instance, rizz is a shortened version of charisma. Slay is a variation of kill. We used to say “killing it,” so this tracks. Bougee is an abbreviation of bourgeois. In line with today’s instant gratification and short attention spans, some words are simply dropped from the sentence. Such as “it’s giving” or “I can’t.”

​​I’m not sure I’ll ever grasp everything my grandchildren say to me, but I still understand what it means when they hug me.

​I won’t give up trying to be part of their world. As Robert Crum professed in 1968, I’m going to “Keep on truckin’.”​

Share your experience: Tell us the phrases you've picked up from young people today. Share your secret language in the comments section We deciphered some key phrases to help you understand your grandkids.