By: Benjamin  He

In case you somehow haven’t recently, generation Alpha is becoming infamous for its slang terms. Slang has been around for a while (cough “groovy” cough), yet even those people who once used “cool beans” “chill pill” or “gnarly” have this image in their heads that modern slang is ridiculous, inappropriate, or just straight-up bad for everything. But that’s not exactly true. As language evolves, more terms that are appropriate for today’s world will emerge, and people of all ages can begin to use them to describe anything that happens in everyday life.

In this article, I’ll be covering most of the more prominent slang terms and giving a base rundown of today’s language.

According to Wonderopolis.org, the most recent slang is generated from three main sources: popular music, politics, and the internet. For instance, since the majority of 2020 was spent inside playing Among Us, everyone’s favorite murder mystery game, the slang term “sus” was developed, meaning suspicious. And these last few years of the internet have been crazy.

Let’s start with something simple: “Mid.” What is mid? It really just means average, or around average. For instance, if you had a hot dog and you thought it wasn’t really that bad but it wasn’t great, you would describe it as mid. My favorite thing about mid is its versatility. You can describe it to almost anything, for instance, skill level: “He’s really mid at soccer,” products: “That computer line is kinda mid” or “My old shoes are pretty mid.”

We’ll bring up the term “cringe,” something arguably more useful in today’s society. Cringe is hard to explain. It’s sort of that twitchy, uncomfortable feeling that you obtain when you watch a childhood skit, or Cocomelon. Honestly, there really isn’t a right way to explain cringe, but please keep in mind: It has a negative, or mid, connotation. The best way to define it is just a state of extreme awkwardness or secondhand embarrassment.

The last term we’ll be looking at today will be a slightly newer one than the others. This one is called “Glaze,” and a friend’s definition was “showering someone with compliments.” I suppose the action of glazing someone could just be called flattering someone or praising them. If you have a friend that thinks everything is awesome and makes it known, then they’re glazing someone.

There we go! A far-from-complete guide to some of the more popular slang terms.