You know you still use some of these words. Admit it!

[chumdawg]

In the gnarly world of far-out slang, only 'cool' is still groovy

By LARRY NEUMEISTER

Updated: 1/30/2006 6:44:10 AM

NEW YORK (AP) -- Groovy is over, hip is square, far out is long gone. Don't worry, though -- it's cool.

"Cool" remains the gold standard of slang in the 21st century, as reliable as a blue-chip stock, surviving like few expressions ever in our constantly evolving language. It has, despite the pressures of staying relevant and trendy, kept its cool through the centuries -- even as its meaning changed drastically.

How cool is that?

Way cool, say experts who interpret words and slang for their messages about society.

"Cool is certainly a charter member for the slang hall of fame," says Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor of popular culture. "Cool just sits back and keeps getting used generation after generation and lets the whole history of the language roll off its back."

Thompson estimates using the word 50 times a day "as an egghead professor" because no other word, slang or otherwise, quite does the job.

Before it became slang, cool gained a prominent place in language: first for its literal reference to temperature, and later as a favorite metaphor of writers as far back as Chaucer in the 1300s.

Thompson credits its casual acceptance and versatility for its staying power. A word like groovy splashes onto the scene but dies quickly as children mock their parents with references to "The Brady Bunch," he said.

Cool, in contrast, "emerged into the language in such a cool kind of way, it never became dated," Thompson said.

In 1602, Shakespeare wrote that Queen Gertrude told Hamlet: "O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper, Sprinkle cool patience."

As the centuries passed, cool took on new meanings. By the 17th century, the word helped define a woman's ability to allay a man's passion through sex.

The flames of passion were soon cooled, as cooler heads prevailed. By the horse and buggy era, "cooling one's heels" described the need to rest a horse with overheated hooves. The 1800s saw the use of cool off, meaning to kill, and the cool customer.

As an expression, though, cool largely kept its cool until the 1900s, when it exploded in versatility and popularity.

Early in the century, it was used to refer to large amounts of money: a cool million dollars. In the 1920s, Calvin Coolidge created a campaign slogan in his run for the White House: "Keep Cool With Coolidge." By the 1930s, cool as a cucumber was "the bee's knees" -- slang of the era for excellent.

But by the 1940s, the word exploded into popular usage through its constant use in jazz clubs, where musicians showed the versatility of a word that had already enjoyed wide use in the nation's black population.

The 1997 book, "America in So Many Words," published by Houghton Mifflin Co., traces the origination of the modern usage of cool to the late 1940s. In 1947, the book noted, the Charlie Parker Quartet recorded "Cool Blues."

A year later, Life magazine titled an article "Bebop: New Jazz School is Led by Trumpeter Who is Hot, Cool and Gone." And in 1948, The New Yorker said "the bebop people have a language of their own. ... Their expressions of approval include 'cool.' "

Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley, said the word should have faded away at the end of the fifties. Instead, it was adopted and redefined by hippies, followed by surfers, rappers and techno-geeks.

"Click here for cool stuff," Nunberg says of its current incarnation. "There's some question whether this is reinvention or retro," he says.

Peter N. Stearns, a social historian at George Mason University and author of the book "American Cool," said cool exploded in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s because society needed a word to express attitude without anger.

"We were dealing with a culture that was placing an increasing premium on controlling emotion, particularly anger," he said. The hippies in the 1960s used the word to "promote the notion that they were relaxed and not angry," Stearns said.

Since then, he said, the expression has lost some of its strength even as it has grown in usage -- especially in advertising.

"It's overused to the extent it doesn't have a great meaning," he said. "When we say somebody's looking cool, we don't have as much sense of meaning as we did 40 years ago. Now we just mean he's looking good."

Thompson said there's no reason to believe that cool will ever go the way of linguistic dinosaurs like "bad" (meaning good) or "chill" (meaning cool out).

"It just keeps swaggering along," he said. "I think this has gone beyond slang and into a word that is so useful and versatile that it is just one of the words we use. There are no other words in the vocabulary that quite do the job.

"Cool is already firmly ensconced in several generations. It's got street cred. And it had street cred before we even used the phrase street cred."

Some slang that didn't pass the test of time

Groovy

Neat/neato

Hip

Slick

Keen

Chill

Excellent

Heavy

NOT

Outta sight

Far out

Top drawer

Buttah

Dynamite

Phat

Off the hook

Sweet

Radical

Gag me with a spoon

Super

Gnarly

The cat's pajamas

Def

Copasetic

Trip

Fab

Da bomb

Rad

Beat

Classy

Wack

Square

With it

Burnout

Right on

The fuzz

Copper

Nifty

Out of this world

http://www.poststar.com/story.asp?storyid=208745

[sike]

drats has always been a favorite of mine....it just makes people laugh...

[u2sarajevo]

Originally Posted by chumdawg

Chill - One of my favorites still. I always ask my kids to chill when they are out of control.

Sweet - This word never made it out of my vocabulary.

Copasetic - Use it at least once a month.....

Trip - I still say things like "thats a trip".... I guess that counts?

Rad - I actually use this on my kids occasionaly to see their reaction. Hoping that maybe it will make a comeback in the Lewisville area soon because of this.

Copper - What does this mean?

Nifty - Still use it....

Others that I still really use:

Word
True that
It's all good
Keep it real - although this and the one above might be fairly recent....
Chick - It's a term of endearment for me. If I call a girl a chick, that generally means I really like her... It's kind of like my "dude" for girls. If I am unsure if a female is offended by the term, I will start out by calling her "chickadee" until I feel completely comfortable with calling her just plain "chick".

[sike]

I call gals "chick" as well....no one has ever been offended that I know of...they know its a term of endearment...

[irontoad]

edit

[irontoad]

One I always hated was 'sike'.

[sike]

Originally Posted by irontoad

what about 'sike'?

I said that a couple times in my life

[chumdawg]

I didn't know that "hip" or "sweet" had ever gone out of style.

U2, I got myself in some deep crap with a female English prof at UTD freshman year for using "chic" in class. She was NOT happy. She stopped down the entire class and told us all to write down on a blank paper seven words we should never say in public. Her point was that "chic" was supposed to be on it.

Of course, she didn't like me at all before that, and after that I didn't care for her much either.

[sike]

what an idiot...I can think of other words to describe her....

[Murphy3]

I think the only word that I use in the capacity in which they're talking about here is 'cool' unless I'm using them to intentionally sound a bit goofy.

[Drbio]

I haven't heard "the cats pajamas" in a looooong time.

[sike]

Originally Posted by Drbio

I haven't heard "the cats pajamas" in a looooong time.

don't lie...you say it all the time at the swingers club you frequent....so I've been told by U2.

[Nash13]

The only words i use off that list are Copper (nickname for cops) and Wack.

Although a term that i just recently started using is Nip/Tuck. Like when somebody i know says something stupid, which is way too common, i say "you need to nip/tuck that shite."

[sike]

I use "cold wack foshizzle" quite often.

[mary]

I think "Excellent" is the only word of that list I use quite a bit besides cool - but not in a Spicoli kind of way.

[u2sarajevo]

By the way, my list of words I use.... I forgot to mention that I use most of them because I am 100% street.

I'm down with it, know what I'm sayin' G? (<--- If that doesn't prove my streetness, I don't know what will)

[sike]

Originally Posted by u2sarajevo

By the way, my list of words I use.... I forgot to mention that I use most of them because I am 100% street.

I'm down with it, know what I'm sayin' G? (<--- If that doesn't prove my streetness, I don't know what will)

I barely understood a word you said here! man you must be street.

[Nash13]

Originally Posted by u2sarajevo

By the way, my list of words I use.... I forgot to mention that I use most of them because I am 100% street.

I'm down with it, know what I'm sayin' G? (<--- If that doesn't prove my streetness, I don't know what will)

Before you go annointing yourself as the next Godfather, people on the street spell with like "wit." It rolls easier off the tongue.

[sike]

Originally Posted by Nash13

Before you go annointing yourself as the next Godfather, people on the street spell with like "wit." It rolls easier off the tongue.

I nomally don't spell out my words when hitting the strizzeet.

[Member]

Words I still often use today, granted I'm 17:

Cool
Chill - use this term quite often when someone is getting out of hand/loud/abnoxious
Sweet - I find myself saying "that's pretty sweet" nonchalantly a lot, not how the writer of the article portrays it
Excellent - used usually when a plan works out
Classy

[sike]

Originally Posted by Member

Words I still often use today, granted I'm 17:

Cool
Chill - use this term quite often when someone is getting out of hand/loud/abnoxious
Sweet - I find myself saying "that's pretty sweet" nonchalantly a lot, not how the writer of the article portrays it
Excellent - used usually when a plan works out
Classy

this was your 666th post.....you may only be 17 now.....but one day you will enslave much of the world...as the Antichrist!!!!

[Smiles]

You guys have really made me laugh today - what an amusing thread.

Sike, we've all been the antichrist in some capacity since this boards inception. *wink*

[Member]

Alright Sike took my post count one step too far, so I'm makin it 667 just for him.

[Drbio]

Originally Posted by sike

don't lie...you say it all the time at the swingers club you frequent....so I've been told by U2.

He must have used his mod skirt powers to edit this information.

[Male30Dan]

Originally Posted by Drbio

He must have used his mod skirt powers to edit this information.

kkkkkeeeeeeeeeee!

[FreshJive]

this must be the most time delayed double post ever

[FreshJive]

Does anyone still say "the lick"? That shit is the lick, dawg.

There is no shame in using outdated slang. Its actually hipper than using the slang du jour. Like the first time I saw Sike's name I thought "Fn genius" (now its kind of old like TXU Julia).

[irontoad]

RIGHT OFF!