It’s undeniable, modern life moves fast. One moment you’re updating your MSN status and carefully curating your top friends on MySpace, the next you’re endlessly scrolling TikTok or Reels wondering what someone ate and trying to figure out if your skinny jeans are cheugy.
Language is a living, breathing creature. The rapid rise of technology and, most importantly, social media over the last three decades have given us new ways to connect with the entire world, regardless of the language we speak. Many generations are supremely comfortable with using shorthand to communicate. For millennials, touch-keypads and T9 predictive text led to popular abbreviations such as LOL, BRB, and asap. Therefore, it’s no surprise that each generation comes with its own lexicon.
Decoding the language of younger generations is important. Not just to stay relevant and not cringe, but to stay connected with your relatives and colleagues, as well as the wider world. After all, you don’t want to spend the rest of your life doomscrolling and scratching your head, do you?
What’s most interesting about the language of Gen Z and Gen Alpha is how rapidly it evolves, thanks to the ability of words to go viral. Words can take on whole new meanings or completely fall out of usage in the space of weeks. A word can also become a global phenomenon after a few million views. In honour of the recent announcement of Collins’ 2024 Word of the Year, let’s go scrolling in the deep to decode the language of these generations.
Before we get into it, let’s define who we’re actually talking about. Gen Z are those born after 1995 but before 2010, meaning they were entering early childhood as we crossed over into the new millennium. As for Gen Alpha, they were born after 2010, meaning the oldest in this generation are in their mid-teens. Unlike previous generations, they’ve been completely immersed in technology from the day they were born.
So, let’s talk vibes. Younger generations are throwing out the rulebook when it comes to societal expectations around beauty, and that in itself is iconic. There are so many ways to spread good vibes and hype up other people, but if you want to avoid a generational faux pas, it’s time to throw outdated terms such as slay and on fleek out of your daily vocab.
Next time you want to tell someone you love their outfit or their make-up is impeccable, you could tell them they ate, which is not to be confused with the act of eating. Instead, it means something is exceptionally good or even awe-inspiring, which means it can also be used as a way of complimenting someone for something they did, such as nailing a TikTok dance. Bonus points if you write it as 4+4. Which equals 8… get it?
You may be familiar with a glow-up, which is a typically Gen Z compliment. While it is becoming less commonly used in places like TikTok, it’s still a cringe-free way of telling someone they look confident, attractive, or are generally ‘glowing’. If you want to stay relevant, you could also say gyatt, an exclamation typically used to express excitement or shock and often used as a compliment. Similarly, ditch swag for rizz, a way of referring to exceptional presence or charm, and shorthand for charisma.
What about memes? Since the dawn of the internet, memes and cats have dominated conversation, shaping cultural conversation and often giving us all a much-needed laugh.
And talking of cats, you may have seen the word mewing floating around. Not to be confused with meowing, mewing involves repositioning your tongue in your mouth to give you a snatched jawline. But is it a beauty tip or is it a meme? Some influencers mew to take fire selfies, other mew ironically, usually combined with TikTok’s heinous ‘Bold Glamour’ filter that makes everyone look like Prince Charming from Shrek. It’s all about context, people.
Speaking of context, as you scroll through your feeds, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and a lot of our celebrities seem to have an awful lot of children. The comment sections of videos featuring them are awash with statements such as ‘mother is mothering’ or simply, ‘mother’. We can roughly trace this phenomenon back to Lady Gaga, who has been referred to as Mother Monster thanks to her speech in the 2011 music video for Born This Way. Stan culture has come a long way and now, if you particularly love a famous person, you may call them mother, because they ‘raised’ you. If you’d prefer not to call your favourite musician your mother, you could call them a GOAT or GOATed, meaning ‘Greatest Of All Time’. Once again, bonus points if you simply post the goat emoji..
One might argue this is a little delulu, meaning delusional. But as a great TikTokker once said (probably), you can make your delulu come trululu. Consequently, you can use delulu either to call someone crazy, or to encourage them to chase their dreams. Think of it as a little like manifesting.
Now, let’s turn our attention to some more general ways of communicating, or yapping if you will. Once upon a time, yapping had negative connotations, meaning someone was talking in an annoying or persistent way. For Gen Alpha, yapping is an endearing way of describing talking to each other, particularly to your friends or about things you’re passionate about.
You may also have heard of aura points, which is like karma but much cooler. While many of these slang words don’t have clear origins, you could guess this is influenced by videogames. In RPG games such as Fall Out and Skyrim, your actions have consequences, and this is the principle behind aura points. Essentially, they measure wins and fails in life, so you might lose aura points for forgetting to hand in your homework but gain them for holding the door open for someone. It’s typically applied satirically, rather than as a serious commentary on your actions.
Now, let’s turn our attention to vocabulary which unless you’re chronically online or have Gen Alpha children or relatives, will make absolutely no sense. It’s giving brainrot, to put it in Alpha terms. Words and phrases that fall under this category including skibidi, which is used interchangeably to describe things that are both bad and cool and originates from the ’Skibidi Toilet’ YouTube videos (you need to see them to believe them); Fanum tax, which means to steal food from a friend and was originally coined by streamer Fanum; Ohio, which came from a viral meme of an astronaut looking at Earth and saying ‘Wait, it’s all Ohio?’ which has quickly come to mean something bad, boring or stupid; and finally Sigma, used to describe someone popular or attractive, inspired by Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants.
Congratulations, you have officially completed your crash course in decoding the language of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Go forth and avoid embarrassing yourself on the internet.
By Rachel Quin
Rachel Quin is a freelance marketer and copywriter with a love of language, books and cats.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
