Every generation adopts new slang that every other generation finds mortifying. The 20th century brought us “groovy” and “radical”. Millennials, the first to have their slang largely forged on the internet, gave us “doggo” and “totes”. It is all transient and replaceable: “cool beans” of the 2010s came to describe what “far out” did in the 1960s.

What, then, is the vernacular of Gen Z? “Rizz” (short for “charisma”) has come to mean a kind of sexual charm; “snatched” (physically sculpted, or usually just skinny) comes from African American vernacular English. But more than anything Gen Z language is associated with euphemistic baby talk that has leaped out of TikTok and into young people’s real lexicons: “seggs” (sex), “spicy” (sexual), “unalived” (killed), “the panini” (the pandemic), “cornucopia” (homophobia), “yahtzee” (Nazi), “pew pew” (gun).

New Statesman