Scootch your cootch: how to speak teen

Whatever: every generation has its own shorthand

It is a language I do not speak. I’m constantly asking for translations. This is mortifying. It results in much mockery and eye-rolling. It’s the language of teenagers right now, it’s gloriously inventive and by the time I grasp it I suspect this means that the world has moved on. Frankly, I’m still with “deadset” and “far out”. But the world of our teens? Some expressions bear a delicious relationship to concrete words, others are wilfully obscure – quite possibly to keep Olds like me out. But here goes with a fair attempt to capture this imaginatively fertile moment in time. Deep breath.

Gossip is tea. “Got some tea for you,” is accompanied by a little waggle of the pinky, like you’re holding a tea cup. That’s cap – it’s not the real deal, a lie (relating to wearing a cap, not a hat.) That’s so dog – unfair. If someone is good looking she’s fine; a snack. I do not want to deconstruct this one.

Glow up is a makeover. Heather, a so-called perfect female. Kween, a girl who’s absolutely slaying it. Chad, a hyper masculine, overtly sexual young man. Ooft – impressively, drop-dead gorgeous. A main character is an oddball who always wants to have their moment, but who stereotypically doesn’t fit in.

Bussin, delicious food. Slay means to work hard, do something well. Doozy? Good, as is sweet. Sick – cool, awesome. Fire: really cool. Salty: bitter or jealous. Drippy means you have really expensive stuff, style, clothes. Drip is jewellery. Ditto ice. Banger is a great song. This song slaps means it sounds really good. Chill is calm down, or an invitation to hang out. Netflix and chill – an invitation to hang out and watch a show and quite possibly have sex afterwards.

Scootch your cootch translates as get lost, or take your vagina away from me. Parents are boomers or Karens. Unfair. Bah: brother, bro or bruh. You’re a bit extra means you’re taking this too far, you’re a bit much. Clap back means to respond to an insult with an even bigger insult. Stan: that you support something. Basic is mainstream, boring, unexciting. What’s your body count? Slang for how many people you’ve slept with.

You’re cracked means you’re really good at a game. Goated, that you’re talented at something. Goals, doing something amazing to achieve an incredible result. Boss, ie she looks the best, the boss, with that new haircut. Cranking, building up your game. Tuning, chatting up. Squad is your gang. Froth or frothing, super keen. Choof or stig, a cigarette or a vape. Cringe – what I usually am to all my teens. Especially writing this. Can’t even: there are no words.

And now I turn from the world of the impenetrable, eye-rolling teen to the warm chuckly tones of Les Murray and his own favourite words, a world away from the above. “I have a head full of beloved plain terms I suspect have little or no resonance abroad,” he once explained. “Tankstand, downpipe, paperhark, tank water, blady grass, joey, stringhalts, and so on. I often wonder just what overseas audiences are hearing and understanding when I read to them. I guess they hear the important thing… that there’s a world in my work, strange but valid. It used to be a new idea, one we had to fight for, the notion that there weren’t just one or two valid forms of English, but a constellation of Englishes… Favourite words of mine are legion and ever-changing: cobble, cullet, solar wind, liftoff, king parrot, jink, mirrory, watermelon, shofar, curd, burnished, halo, biplane, trance, pomander, asperge…”

“A constellation of Englishes,” oh yes. Most gloriously. And as with Les and his syntactical singularities, so to with the teens of today and the words of their worlds. That adults, quite deliberately, aren’t expected to understand. But they’re glorious nonetheless. A few of my own favourites are mizzle, lumen, petrichor, smirr, thrum, pluviophile and ludic. Revealing, as these things always are. Yours?