'That's Hot,' and Other Ways to Say Cool
Think Tank #71
How many of you use slang terms without even realizing it?
I’m not talking about obvious ones like ‘bet’ or ‘bussin’ or ‘cap’ or any of the numerous very obvious slang terms that I feel out of place just typing.
I’m talking about the everyday ones, which are arguably not even ‘slang’ anymore at all—‘cool,’ for example, or ‘awesome.’
What differentiates one category from the other?
The Oxford Languages definition of slang is “a type of language that consists of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people.”
Essentially, it has to do with the degree of formality, and the amount of different people who use it.
In other words, the public decides, and the public doesn’t usually follow any hard and fast rules.
For example, why has ‘that’s cool’ remained a common English phrase, while ‘that’s hot’ (a phrase derived from the opposite end of the temperature spectrum with a similar meaning) died around the same time as Paris Hilton’s popularity?
‘Cool’ was first used by black jazz musicans in the 1930s, and was added to the dictionary in the late 40s, around the same time that the phrase was mentioned in a New Yorker article. In just under a century, the word has shifted from something reserved for, well, cool people, to an everyday word that barely even feels informal.
As an aside, a lot of common American slang terms have their origins in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) including the dated ‘groovy,’ which has always struck me as one of the whitest terms in existence. Exceptions are ‘dope,’ ‘pissed,’ and ‘dude’ (which is, amusingly, thought to be an abbreviation of ‘Yankee Doodle’).
How do these words change? How did ‘awesome’ (a word that literally means ‘inspiring awe’) come to mean, well, cool. How did people refer to things that were ‘cool’ before ‘cool’ became a word? Did the concept of ‘cool’ come into existence because of the word?
Take a look at this chart that I found on Google images:
Here, the very-informal ‘sick’ is defined as the slightly-less-informal ‘cool.’ Though ironic, what else would you call it? Dictionary.com’s attempt at describing ‘sick’ without using ‘cool’ is “outstandingly or amazingly good or impressive.” You have to admit that this doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
It brings back that ubiquitous question of how much culture shapes language, and how much language shapes culture. Perhaps the emergence of ‘cool’ brought about ‘awesome’ and ‘dope’ and ‘sick’ and ‘hot’ and ‘fab’ and ‘funky’ and ‘groovy’ and ‘gnarly’ and ‘rad,’ and ‘GOATed,’ and ‘fire.’
Words are cool, huh?