Pangea quips
Friends were discussing viable labels for special coffee brews when one came up with an ideal thematic grouping. He began with Tunnel, which immediately brought to mind a coughing president in a dank, subterranean Malinta chamber of Corregidor Island in the throes of the Pacific War.
Dungeon followed ill-fittingly. The same war, the Allies suffering in a flooded fort. Catacomb had to join in, albeit ironically, as java hardly seemed eager to be enjoyed, warm or cold. But such are the treats of randomly effective marketing.
Another came up with Virago and Banshee, but the closest he got to completing a tight circle was Vitriol. The same with odd flying specimens like Albatross, Dirigible, and Bungee, a rather odd triumvirate.
The game had to rely on the alphabet. And somehow, the first terms that came up were all relatively fresh slang from the new millennium, and then some. Represented were what may be called novel intrusions into the language, or outright inventions.
Bae (said to be an acronym for “before anyone else”). Canceled. Chill Pill. Diss. The first is an endearment; the second means cutting off from that endearment (also Ghosted); the third (needing to de-stress) and fourth (Black slang) came as early as the ’80s.
More of the same, and we realize we’re into the strange new lingo of the Pangea (early 20th century: from pan- “all” + Greek gaia “earth”). Which means covering the GenZers/ Millennials and GenXers. Techno terms and then some are familiar: Dongle. Drip (your fashion or swagger. Dude (initially slang for “a man,” but in the late 1980s, it started to be used as an exclamation, and with its adoption into GenZ culture, become gender-neutral).
More terms became familiar. Fentanyl (we know why). Flex. GlamCamp. Headbanger (from the early ’80s, for a fan of heavy metal music, shortened over the years to just “banger,” meaning a really good song. Influencer (a dime a dozen). JLo. Kardashians.
Karen (pejorative for an unlikable, pushy middle-aged woman who tries to bully her way with a constant sense of entitlement).
Literally (means the complete opposite of its standard definition, but millennials purposefully misuse it in a phrase such as “literally dying” or “literally the worst” for dramatic effect. “In 2013, dictionaries decided to literally include the figurative meaning of literally in their newer editions.”)
Phat (excellent or sexy, abbreviating “Pretty Hot and Thick”—from hip-hop as a deliberate misspelling and inverted meaning of the word “fat.”) Stan (stalker-fan, from an Eminem song). Simp (obsessive crushing on someone or something). Swiftie. Thirst (lusting after someone, maybe Taylor). Thirst trap (what Elon Musk obviously announced, quite crudely).
Slay (in slang terms, “to do something exceptionally”). Vlogger (a dime a dozen).
Woke (the obviously incorrect tense of “awake” in the phrase “stay woke,” said “to describe someone aware of certain truths… like a man conscious of the glass ceiling and gender pay gap.” Most academics had trouble with the term for some time. A fellow poet protested my use of it in a poem.
Yuppie (itself based on an acronym formed from the initial letters of “young, urban professional”). Used to define “young, ambitious, and well-educated city dwellers who had a professional career and an affluent lifestyle,” it became mainly used in a derogatory sense as the yuppie has been commonly made fun of in pop culture.
Now what can a kaffeeklatsch amount to, but a good brew of generational language in increasingly wild evolution?
(Note: A few of the quotes applied here were written in 2022 by Fares Zoghlami in his article “Alphabets—A Journey Through Written Communication.”)