I had an interesting conversation with Squirt recently.
ME: You better change your shirt. And when was the last time you washed your hair? Can you get a comb through that? Holy cow, you’re actually going to go out looking like that?
TEEN: (rolling eyes) Jeez, Mom! Have another sip of the hatorade!
Excuse me? Sip of the hatorade?
This phrase was obviously meant to shut the recipient up. It worked very well on me because my brain simply could not absorb it. If I’d been in a Star Trek episode I would’ve been vibrating in confusion until I pitched forward onto the kitchen table in a major hard disk failure.
I guess it’s time to admit I’m having language difficulties with Squirt and Tiger (ages 14 and 16). At least when we were kids, slang made sense. Not today—the kids of today don’t know any better, poor things.
Back when I was a kid if I said something was “cool,” Mom could at least figure out that it was a positive term, because the word “cool” implied something desireable.
After all, cool weather is good. Cool mints are refreshing. Being “calm, cool and collected” is admirable.
You see? Perfectly logical. Our slang made sense.
But today, oy, today. I just get used to idiocies like “dope,” as in
Man, that car is so dope.
which means
My, that car is so beautiful, even I would be proud to drive it, which is really something, considering how I hate everything in my current teenager state of being.
And now they’ve gone and switched the slang on me so I can’t even understand that pitiful little piece of information. What used to be dope is now sick. As in,
Man, that car — it’s sick.
It means exactly the same thing as the dope translation above, but is fiendishly designed to speed up a mom’s hard disk failure.
Which brings me back to the hatorade. I didn’t suffer hard disk failure—I survived, because I have tools in my arsenal Mom never even dreamed of: I looked it up on the internet.
1. Hatorade
a figurative drink a hater may thirst for and share. Generally used when someone hops on the bandwagon to hate on someone or something. – same word different spelling (haterade)
Tim must’ve had a tall glass of hatorade, cause he went off on that new Usher trax.
So aha! Now I understand. Squirt felt I was overly critical of his “look.” Why didn’t he just say so?
And now I discover there’s a new term sniffing around our teenagers in the hopes one of them will take it home: “It’s the sex.”
This is a phrase guaranteed to make a mom clutch her heart and pitch over lifeless onto the kitchen table no matter how often she checks UrbanDictionary.com.
Lord help us all.
I’ve been hearing “sick” quite a bit around these parts, and while it kind of grates on my nerves to hear over and over and over and over and over :^P it does make me wonder what it was like for my parents when my brother and I were teenagers.
I was talking to my buddy the other day about a recently-viewed DVD where I described a scene as being “sick” and he looked at me, blinked, and asked “so you liked it then?” “Uh, no, it was gross” I reiterated. “Ah!”
It’s obvious that his exposure to the new vernacular has been extensive! 🙂 Guess I’m going to either have to learn it all or sound like an old fuddy-duddy! LMAO!
Hm. If you’re going to be a fuddy-duddy, I’ll be one of those confused old ladies who spend hours looking out the window and muttering about Why It Was Better In The Old Country.
C’mon mom, don’t hate the player, hate the game… 😉
And there’ll be no more metaphorical sass from YOU, mister!
Hatorade used to be internet-specific, a joke thought up by cynical geek fanboys. Considering I first and have only heard it regularly from a 29-year-old anime freak shut-in (yeah, I know, I’d tell him he embodies every bad stereotype imaginable — but I’m not that mean), I am surprised to hear your kids are using it. But think — it’s a fairly clever, pessimistic pun on “gatorade.” I like it.
Also, as far as sick goes, it’s like “It’s *sick* how awesome that car is.” I think it mostly just got shortened from constructions like that.
Wait till you hear your kids saying “FTW” or “for teh win” (misspelling required). Or any word ending in zor (really, spelled ‘z0r’). Then, I imagine, you’ll really need to scratch your head.
Slang FTW.
Amy, never mind the kids, I’m scratching my head at those examples. What does “for teh win” mean? And why “zor”?
I am so out of it. It’s back to the Urban Dictionary for me, and pronto!
FTW!!!!
H4XZOR KTHX
OWNED
NUBS ME > YOU
zOMG
LOLZ
FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!! FTW!!
H4X0R; “Hacker”
FTW!!!! “For the win” (stands for “For teh Win!”, a common way of saying something is very good, or fun to do.)
H4XZOR (“hacker”)
KTHX “okay, thanks”
OWNED “To defeat someone … or to humiliate someone tactically in a debate; to exhibit extreme coolness”
NUBS ME > YOU “Newbies me and you”
zOMG “Oh my God/goodness!”
LOLZ “Laughing out loud,” “lots of laughs”
Definitions provided by Wikipedia , with a little slang hand-holding from Black Champagne.