Last week I visited my older son, Davis, at college. We had lunch, went shopping and enjoyed four glorious hours of mom and son time. He brought along one of his new buddies for lunch, the adorable and sweet Tommy.
During their bro talk I heard a word used in an unfamiliar context. My ears perked up like a dog hearing his master say “outside.” Tommy was happy to give clarification, mainly because he’s not my own son who is probably sick of his mother using conversations to search for topics to write about.
I bring you Part 2 of the ever-popular Teen Lingo Decoder — The College Edition, thanks to my new best friend, Tommy. No offense to my actual best friend.
Raw — Some foods, like carrots and cucumbers, are great raw. Others, like chicken and pork, are dangerous raw. Fresh and unpleasant emotions can be raw. In teen lingo, raw is sort of hard core and awesome, or as my fellow ’80s lovers would say, totally awesome.
“At mahjongg, Amy won with a closed hand that consisted of no fewer than four jokers. The girls declared her mahj skills were raw!”
Chalked — The outline of a dead body at a crime scene? The hands of Olympian Stephen Nedoroscik as he mounts the pommel horse? The blackboard after Bart Simpson writes what he’s not going to do? If you said yes to any of these, you’re old and don’t know the young people definition of chalked.
If something is going wrong and it’s not going to work out, it’s chalked. It ain’t happening anymore. Give up, it’s over.
“When Amy tried to play another closed hand at mahjongg, she realized you can’t call on any tiles, so she chalked it and went with a classic consecutive run.”
Skibidi — This is a fun nonsense word teens just utter on a whim, with no context needed. Skibidi is a very flexible word, as it can mean cool or dumb or silly or just be a random filler word used with no reason or rhyme. That’s convenient because nothing rhymes with skibidi.
Faded — This one is like a BOGO — buy one, get one free. That’s because faded has two popular meanings with the kids these days. If you’re drunk or high, you’re faded. And if you skip out on something, you faded.
There is huge potential for cross-referencing here, like if you skip out on the girls’ dinner tonight because you drank too much wine at lunch, you faded because you were faded. Skibidi.
Bop — This refers to a woman who has many special friends with varying degrees of specialness. She’s known to bop from dude to dude, no judgment. Similar to Samantha Jones from “Sex and the City” and Blanche Devereaux from “The Golden Girls,” a bop likely has an unapologetic revolving door of suitors. The word itself sounds cute and peppy, lighthearted and charming.
The bop your teen is referring to might carry those traits, which is why her dance card is always full. However, the only dance she’s likely doing is the horizontal mambo.
Boys — We know what they are by definition but, in this case, boys describes the closeness of a relationship. If you’re boys with someone you are close chums, tight pals, good friends.
“Oh you know Tommy? Yeah, we’re boys!”
The jury is still out on whether girls can be boys, but you know what they say: You can be anything you put your mind to.
