“Cool” first showed up in the late 1910’s and early 1920’s, and so fully absorbed into the culture that each subsequent generation just knows it without really considering it to be slang.
“My bad” was novel slang in the 80’s, went mainstream in the 90’s, and is still with us today.
I’d guess that among recent slang, “yeet,” “rizz,” and “drip” will have the most staying power, most likely to be picked up unironically by older generations and just propagated from there.
Well, that’s part of why I think those have staying power.
Same with some slang that’s been around but has recently been elevated to new heights, like “cooked” re-entering the slang mainstream and some younger people thinking their generation invented it.
Or newer syntactical/grammatical constructions that borrow from established phrases, like “it’s giving (noun or noun phrase)” to mean some kind of description. Or industry jargon that enters the mainstream. Once those hit a threshold popularity they tend to stick around as well.
On the other hand, we don’t need to try to understand slangs anymore, because they will be obsolete tomorrow in the morning, when a new one appears.
No, some of them just become permanent.
“Cool” first showed up in the late 1910’s and early 1920’s, and so fully absorbed into the culture that each subsequent generation just knows it without really considering it to be slang.
“My bad” was novel slang in the 80’s, went mainstream in the 90’s, and is still with us today.
I’d guess that among recent slang, “yeet,” “rizz,” and “drip” will have the most staying power, most likely to be picked up unironically by older generations and just propagated from there.
Yeet is over a decade old my man.
I am confident that drip is even older lmao
Well, that’s part of why I think those have staying power.
Same with some slang that’s been around but has recently been elevated to new heights, like “cooked” re-entering the slang mainstream and some younger people thinking their generation invented it.
Or newer syntactical/grammatical constructions that borrow from established phrases, like “it’s giving (noun or noun phrase)” to mean some kind of description. Or industry jargon that enters the mainstream. Once those hit a threshold popularity they tend to stick around as well.
But the ones who get integrated into language for the long-term, we will eventually see them all around and it will be impossible to miss