Hot is not so hot.įab – short for fabulous, full of optimism, turns ups burning brightly at the beginning of the 1960s. Hot – carrying many of the positive qualities of cool is recorded in 1845. But if someone or something is really cool it’s better than ok. But, hey, this language is still evolving as succeeding generations make of it what they need.Ĭool is still current, often in a weakened form as a substitute for ‘ok’. However, before things could be cool they were sometimes hot. Its generally ‘excellent’ sense didn’t fully emerge until the jazz scene of the late 1940s.ĭigging it down the decades, cool is the coolest. However, if you are or ever have been stylish and attractive, up-to-date, awesome or admired then these words may be yours.Ĭool – originally African American slang, was first recorded as a form of approval in 1884. My list of words is in no way comprehensive, whatever. So, here’s a short, nostalgic lexicon of some modern words for modern people compiled by someone who may have had a Warholian fifteen minutes of cool way back in the 70s. Will you remember the daze when you were cool? Because nothing dates quicker than words for the culturally hep. Were you once a legend in your own lunchtime? Unless, perhaps, you were a cultural icon and, somehow, above showbiz and apart from celebrity. The zeitgeist is ephemeral and, let’s be honest, not properly identifiable until its time has passed. Without retrospect how will you ever know that you were riding the zeitgeist until yesterday’s fashions are patched and flapping in the winds of change. & how much of this dream you are living will you remember when you wake up? are you cool? If you know what is what and have cool regard of le dernier cri, from avant-garde to zeitgeist, then you, oh hipster dude, you are living the dream. If that is you with the à la mode gleam in your eye, then you are a cultural treasure. If you have captured this moment, like a gaudy butterfly pinned to your page in history. If you are, just for the nonce, a vibrant shadow in the spirit of our times and if you describe an arc that is the cutting edge in the circles within which you move then, you my friend, you are ahead of the curve. I was browsing Flappers 2 Rappers: American Youth Slang by the wonderful slang lexicographer Tom Dalzell when I bumped into some cool words that took me to the UK back in the day…
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