If you own an old American car or most old motorcycles, you’re almost certainly familiar with cold-starting your vehicle by pulling the choke. This usually pulls a cable, which turns a valve in your carburetor. This has the effect of limiting airflow through the carb, so your engine gets more fuel and less air, which helps it stay running while cold.
This morning, Jason wrote about the hilariously complex way that old British cars sometimes started. Some of these vehicles used tiny starting carburetors, which more or less served the purpose of a choke, just in a weirder way than Americans are used to. This is just a long way to get to this joke from Arch Duke Maxyenko:
“Starting carburetter” is just old, fancy, rich British for “choke me, daddy.”
My teenage niece says “mid” a lot, and it took me a very long time to figure out that it does not mean “middle,” but bad. I’m told that if something is “bussin,” it’s good. Apparently, it has nothing to do with mass transit. Likewise, “no cap” does not describe a bottle without its sealing apparatus, but that something is not a lie.
The reason why I’m talking about this is an innocent comment made by Data in Mark’s Volvo vs. Pontiac showdown post:
The stick in the Fiero seems awfully tall. That red button is clearly their Radio Shack attempt at the “Go Baby Go” button from Gone in 60 Seconds. As the kids say, this Fiero gives me the Ick.
IRegertNothing, Esq.:
Is that what they say now? What happened to “mid”? I have a 13 year old and I still can’t keep up with the lingo of the youths.
Data:
I think mid = mediocre and ick = gross. My 25 year old informed me jelly is no longer in which is just as well since I would feel silly as hell asking if someone was jelly of me. Onions on the belt.
David Tracy wrote about the sweet extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) Ford Bronco that China gets but America does not. Sid Bridge points out something great:
Only Jason will appreciate this, but since EREV is the Hebrew term for the night before something, usually used to talk about the night before a Jewish holiday, it would be hilarious to Jews if the trim levels were named after Jewish holidays. So we had a Bronco Erev Rosh Hashanah (for the first edition) or a Bronco Erev Sukkot (for the topless version) or a Bronco Erev Yom Kippur (for the fast version) or a Bronco Ever Pesach (for the Gluten-free edition)
Thanks, I won’t be able to stop thinking about this every time David gushes over EREVs. Have a great evening, everyone!
Side Bridge forgetting that there’s entire Jewish holiday dedicated to fuel efficiency
Really? A sex joke with overtones of incest gets COTD? Geez. That’s just ick (not to mention also rather mid) *eye roll*
Disappointing, to say the least.
Clearly you’re not spending enough time on the internet.
Wayne Brady something something Djokovic.
“Send her buses”?
I always knew she was bussin’ 🙂
My 14 and 12yo are hilarious with their slang, which changes about every 6 months now. Contrast that with Boomer, X, or even Millenial slang with a life of a decade or more. And we also have mutual intelligibility, which is huge — it’s like the Swedish talking to the Norwegians.
My ride is boss!
Oh, your car is sweet?
Yes, his whip is dope!
Enter Gen Z
Skibidi gyatt W rizz mew ohio…
3 generations beat a child in unison
I have begun slowly enforcing no-slang, proper grammar speech in my house. I don’t have the energy to track slang these days, not that I did when I was a kid decades ago, so when my kids start using slang I just feign senility and say stuff like “Oh, I don’t need to drive you because you’re planning to take the bus?” or lean into my engineer side and ask them “Is there a crossover to limit frequency distortion in that mid driver?”. My kids are highly STEM-focused, so they usually have a moment of confusion trying to understand my response, realize it is because of their idiotic slang, and then change topics to ask details about my response. I still don’t think they fully understand what root mean square means with speakers, but they’ll get there.
I just turn it all into dadjokes to beat the newspeak into submission 🙂
Once they realized you’ve adopted, co-opted, and eclipsed their slang, they’ll either stop using it or they’ll just play along.
I have no problem with Living Language, but the rate of change (adoption AND retirement) is pretty insane right now. It’s like one giant meme with a short shelf life.
My kids are really bad about not saying what they are thinking, so even speaking clearly it is a guessing game for me to decipher what they mean based on the words they use – so throwing slang in just makes that worse for me. My tactic has a 50/50 chance of making them reconsider their word choice or clearly articulate what they mean to say, though I have noticed that is specific to my kids and their friends generally look at me like I have the mental processing power of a turnip.
You know how every restaurant now seems to want a name with the order? I code switch on that one, too.Boomer: “Ash, like the cyborg from Alien.”Gen X: “Ash like from Evil Dead.”Millennial: “Ash like from Pokemon.”Actually the Pokemon one is my go-to 99% of the time now, since most food servers are 17-40 and they all know what’s up.
“Adopted, co-opted and eclipsed” That sounds like a line lifted right out of a Chris Boden short.
My kids are always surprised when I whip out Gen Z slang terms that even they haven’t heard yet. As the resident etymologist in my family, I use the terms completely unironically and it always turns heads. Yes, I could write a few more doctoral dissertations and abandoning all that is fun about a living language, but sometimes it is really fun and funny to just interact with the youth using their own temporal colloquialisms.
A corollary, and amusing scenario, is when my teenage kids clearly think I’ve been a boring adult my entire life.
They whisper conspiratorially with friends about sex, drugs, various counter-culture, whatever, (not doing, they’re good kids) like their generation invented it, and I’ll chime in. They look shocked: “How do YOU know about that!!!”
I simply remind them that I was a teenager longer than they have been, I lived through college, my 20s; more relationships that they’ve had, and known far more people, from all walks of life, than they have; the things I know about would shock them.
I can never tell if they are impressed or mortified.
“Enforcing” is too direct. I get the same effect by really leaning into the clueless old-guy mis-using slang. Even if I understand it, I’m never going to sound reasonable using it, so it’s much more fun to just intentionally, embarrassingly, misuse their own slang, and whatever else from different eras (including groovy), back at them.
They’ve stop using it around me very quickly.
You’ll note by my example, which is similar to yours, that it is an indirect, passive enforcement – I’m not telling them to stop, I’m just giving them feedback with my responses that they are wasting their energy using it around me. I could try to use their slang, but that requires me to track their slang and learn what the words are that I need to know. What I do today is just assume any word I don’t recognize is some new slang and respond with something (likely) erroneous, which puts the onus on them to clarify if they want an actual answer.
Fun fact: you know those weird illustrations in medieval manuscripts, like people getting eaten by snails, or rabbits spanking knights?
Yeah, they were medieval memes. Of course, given the state of travel in those days, it would take decades from them to spread across the continent, but they rose and fell in popularity just like modern memes, except slower
I would call those Lolluminations 🙂
I’m also a superfan of portmanteau.
All this Gen Z slang and I thought I accidentally sauntered into the SkibidiOhioRizzTopian site instead.
The funniest thing about Z slang to me is that the kids have no idea what any of it means either. The understand the context of a term from the InstaTok clips where they learn it, but they have no more idea what “no cap” actually means than their parents do.
Which is wild. I know us Millenials had some really stupid terms we came up with, but they’re all pretty clearly defined.
Then again, we were avid users of Urban Dictionary (which opened in 1998 and has continued to be run by a single person the entire time).
I think this is really a perennial thing. Someone comes up with a term and other kids of the same general age pick it up and use it without knowing the source. I’d say Millenials are unique in the fact that UD was there to help, and they actually used it. Regardless of generation, slang is faddish and most of the users are clueless about it.
One of these days, fetch is gonna happen!
My wife keeps telling me to stop trying to make fetch happen 🙁
Well if we can get Chevy Chase on board for another sequel, maybe.
Ohhh…
This whole thread is the bee’s knees!
I really wish I could find it, as it likely doesn’t exist anymore, but way way back in high school, I collected the slang we were exposed to at the time. It would be hillarious now. I graduated HS in 1973.
I graduated HS the same year. I didn’t think to journal that stuff back then, but I’ll meditate a bit and see what comes flowing back. “That was/is the bomb!” (as in an awesome event, a fantastic car, etc.) is one that comes to mind at the moment. 🙂
I was so confused when they were doing Mid Car Monday.
I thought it was midsize cars until they did the Mercury Grand Marquis and Chevy Aveo back to back.
Awwwwwwweeeeeeee yeah!!!!!