By Madison Go | Posted February 21, 2025
In today’s linguistic landscape, slang terms are created perpetually, reflecting the sociocultural changes that shape our world. Oxford’s word of the year for 2024 was “brain rot.” The definition: “Supposed decline of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially due to consuming too much online content.”
Many argue that the recent addition of words like “mid,” “situationship,” and “edgelord” to the Oxford dictionary prove a significant increase in brain rot. These words are created through processes like blending (e.g., “situationship” from situation and relationship), or semantic shifts that alter a word’s meaning over time.
Montgomery High School Student Madison Go
New words quickly gain traction through online communities, spreading via memes and social media. When words are used repeatedly, they become mainstream, eventually earning spots in dictionaries as contemporary speech. Vivan Pande, a junior at MHS, notes that words born from internet culture “might be nonsensical now, but will be commonplace 10 years from now, and 100 years from now will be like Old English. They’re going to be like Shakespeare.” Streaming platforms like Twitch have become breeding grounds for new terms that become conventional.
Melissa Fattorusso, an English teacher at MHS, is known for her class “slang board,” where she keeps track of the latest expressions. Over the past few years, she has noticed an increase in “gamer slang,” which she attributes to Twitch clips being posted on social media. “There’s one I just learned — clutch-up. It’s a term where right at the moment when someone asks you to do something, you succeed,” she says. The rapid spread of these terms reflects how online platforms have become incubators for language development in an evolving digital scene.
Dating culture in the 2020s has also contributed to the creation of slang, reflecting the nuances of relationships in a digital world. “A lot of slang is centered around romance or attraction. Like when people say either ‘rizz,’ or ‘down-bad,’”
Montgomery junior Gia Alam said. Terms like “rizz” (charismatic flirting ability), “situationship” (a relationship un- defined by labels), and “hard launch” (publicly revealing a partner online), have emerged from discussions about relationships on social media. These words capture emotional experiences or changing social norms, making them relatable and shareable. Shifts from irony to authenticity are accelerated by social media, where it’s easy for slang to saturate conversations, reinforcing the concept of “slang overload.”
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Alam says for most teenagers, slang usage “starts out in an ironic way because when it’s new slang, you’re making fun of it, because you don’t want to be part of the trend. But then because you’re using it so often, it becomes a habit, and so integrated in your vocabulary.” Pande agrees, adding that slang is “constantly evolving, and everyone has to keep up with what’s going on in order to actually understand what’s being said. It starts out satirical... but then at some point, you’re like, this is awesome.”
While “brain rot” reflects how teenagers engage with the world, these linguistic changes are not inherently negative: they’re essential in today’s culture.
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