Catch Up on Catch Phrases

American English is amazing. Every year new expressions, catch phrases and meanings emerge to hopelessly confuse anybody who is either learning the language or doesn't keep up. The media of the day drives the catch phrases and expressions. New phrases and words pop up almost overnight and suddenly everybody's using them.

When I was little, "rat fink" was big. Gay could still mean happy, and those hep-cat Beatniks were like, crazy, man. They were neat-o and nifty-keen. Then suddenly everybody wanted to be in the 'in crowd.'

The 60's were a gas, really boss. We were wiggin' out to our favorite combos. If you had the bread to buy a brew you no longer needed a church key. Fab! Laugh-in socked it to me, baby. The hippies were out of site, groovy, and far out, not to be confused with their unhip cousins, out of state, gravy, and farm out... unless you were ironically hip before your time.

In the early 70's the word "streak" became the most frequently-used verb in the country. It was copasetic, man. I can give you the skinney on the 70s because I boogied with the best of em. It was cool beans if you made the scene at the disco. Negatory? Bummer. Smooth move, ex-lax.

Dude, like, fer shure when we were "80's women" we pedicured our grotty beach feet so we could take them to those rad shoe stores in The Valley. Totally. I could give you all the 411. Neon parachute pants were schweet, airheads, but where was the beef?  Whatever...

In the 90s, nerdy was cool and acronyms ruled. FYI we all used AOL, but it went DOA PDQ, so don't go there. I had to CYA on the QT if it was "my bad," dawg. Everybody was chillin' with the hotties, Yo.. If you said "what a kill!" in the 90s, you'd get, "Say what?" (It used to mean 'extremely humorous,' but that was so-ooo two decades ago. What's up with that?)

U millenial peeps r all about texting. Considering u use a number keypad to do it, i c u went 4 shortcuts. I no, rite? IMHO leetspeak is cray-cray complicated. Maybe I'm just a derp, but YOLO, so don't spend it all texting. Try some IRL.

Meanings change too. Cool and hot mean the same thing, expecially if they are spelled kewl and hawt. 'High' used to mean alcohol. If someone says that something is 'sick' or 'bad' you have to check the source. It might be a 'high' compliment.

Sorry if this blog went on too long. Please don't TL; DR it.