My grandmother, who was born in Cleveland to immigrants from Sicily, spoke Italian at home and English everywhere else. At the age of about 80, she traveled to her parents’ birthplace, and the language came rushing back. When she spoke, younger people laughed and called for their elders to come listen: “She speaks the old Sicilian!”
Language can leave you behind if you don’t keep up. Recent and exponential increases in media consumption have caused this wheel to spin at cyclone speed, and many of the words we use today—when we ping, or ring, or LOL, or IJBOL—are digital in origin or proliferation.
Recently, this new slang has spread to the point of appearing in necessary daily communications and marketing copy for moisturizers. When your co-worker asks you to spill the tea, or when Sydney Sweeney invites you to “enter your strong skin barrier era,” know first they’re appropriating a younger tongue with all the grace of a kindergarten ballerina; then consult this guide to figure out what it is, exactly, they’re trying to say. It’s wise to deploy new slang only when absolutely confident of your meaning. Otherwise, you may as well be speaking the old Sicilian.
IJBOL | abbreviation
I Just Burst Out Laughing; the new LOL.
rizz | noun or verb
The Oxford English Dictionary’s 2023 Word of the Year, “rizz” is an abbreviation of “charisma,” and its meaning and use cases follow suit. You can have rizz; you can rizz another up, or be rizzed yourself. You may not have a rizz or be a rizzy person, nor can you be rizzed off or rizzed on; you may, however, be rizzed into sweet submission. (It happened to me once, in 2016, at a Le Labo store, when an employee with significant rizz asked, “Can I have a name for your candle label, or should I just put ‘handsome’?”)
era | noun
Taylor Swift’s recent world tour, and the widely watched film documenting her recent world tour, stratified her albums and their various vibes and aesthetics into different “eras,” which has since become a word used to define the creative epochs of a pop star as well as the momentary fascinations of ordinary people.
Examples, from Pop Crave, on X: “Billie Eilish teases new era.” “Halsey changes profile pic ahead of new era.” “Ava Max embarks on her third era with the release of her fiery new single, ‘My Oh My.’” A person who has become newly addicted to ketamine: “I’m in my ketamine era.”
eat, ate | verb
Performers in the queer nightlife scene may compliment one another’s shows or looks by saying they ate, or ate that, ate it all up and left no crumbs, or are in the process of eating. Another person can also be “eaten up” by somebody who is better dressed than them, or who dresses them down in conversation.
Seeing Gigi Hadid’s first cover of CR Fashion Book, in 2014: Gigi Hadid is eating the other girls up!
Seeing the 2017 Met Gala arrivals: Bella Hadid is eating Gigi up.
Seeing the Versace Spring-Summer 2022 ad campaign: The Hadids ate down (in perfect unison)!
Seeing the 2024 Met Gala arrivals: Gigi ate, gorged, devoured, is distended; not a crumb was found at the scene in the wake of her magnificent and all-consuming hunger!
mid | adjective
Fine, but not exemplary; middling.
gyatt or gyat | interjection
This word is the result of cramming “Goddamn!” into a single juicy syllable, as in reacting to a Rubenesque posterior.
girlie | noun
Anyone can be a girlie; everyone is a girlie of something. You can be a fashion girlie, a Sweetgreen girlie, a Negroni girlie, a physical-sunscreen girlie, a type-2-diabetes girlie, but you cannot merely be a girlie, which would make you a child. “Should we get cupcakes for Ariel’s birthday? I heard she’s a gluten girlie.”
eepy | adjective
Sleepy, abbreviated. Examples: an eepy girl, our eepy president.
lock in | verb
A phrase that describes a period of intense concentration, often applied to work. “I haven’t looked much at the Ssense sale, but I’m planning to lock in this weekend.”
bussin’ | adjective
I’m not sure if this term has already come and gone, but I want you to be prepared anyway. It means very delicious.
[After the first refreshing spoonful of chilled gazpacho with goat-cheese mousse at La Grenouille] Absolutely bussin’!
unalive | verb
Gen Z’s vernacular morality prohibits them from saying words such as “kill,” preferring the softer “unalive”; it is particularly used as an untriggering reference to suicide. [John Wilkes Booth filming a vlog] Hey guys! Get ready with me to unalive Abraham Lincoln!
goon | verb (N.S.F.W.)
Sorry to inform you, but to goon is to masturbate for extended or chronic lengths of time. Similar to “edging,” “gooning” more specifically connotes rapid digital-porn consumption, as from a social-media feed.
tea | noun
Even the casual RuPaul’s Drag Race viewer knows that tea is the unvarnished truth, and to spill it is to tell it. If something is so true as to be undeniable, it’s tea. This can also be used to exalt appearances or objects. “What’s the tea on Chanel’s new designer?” “Marc for Chanel would be tea.”
standing on business | phrasal verb
Taking care of things. If you’re standing on business, you are about to seriously handle a particular social, professional, or other issue. [John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre] It’s time for me to stand on business—and unalive Abraham Lincoln!
skibidi toilet | noun
All you need to know is that there’s a popular meme called “skibidi toilet” that shows a head sticking out of a toilet, and it’s a Gen Z–Gen Alpha reference point. See the covfefe, Nyan Cat, or “bird is the word.” (If you are an Air Mail Look reader, there is no situation imaginable in which you would have to deploy this term.)
Brennan Kilbane is a New York–based writer. He is originally from Cleveland, and his interviews and essays have appeared in GQ, New York magazine, and Allure, where he was recently on staff as a features writer
