Since plain American speech suffices only to describe the real world, a new vocabulary must be coined annually at colleges, where all experience has a heightened tone and ordinary superlatives falter. Life calls for adjectives that mean better than best, viler than vile, cooler than cool. The contemptibly stupid, the awesomely brilliant and the inexpressibly attractive all demand labels more vivid than last year’s. This winter’s college slang is real unreal.
A Fink Is a Squid. No greater praise can be bestowed on a person, place or thing in California than to be bitchin (a shortened, reverse-English form of sons o’ bitchin’). Degrees of superiority at Colorado College begin with mean, work up toward brutal and savage. The ancient real cool is still admired at tradition-hobbled Harvard, but the University of Florida has gone on to zero cool, and Colorado College’s cool denotes square. How bad is that? reflects admiration; to be unreal is to be impressive.
The language of personal insult flourishes. A zilch is a total loss, and so is a wimp, dimp, dipley nerdly, lizard, gink, barf, scuzz, skag, Jane, lunchbucket, or anyone whose mind is in the soil bank. At the University of North Carolina, last year’s fink is this year’s squid, cull, troll or nerd. The perennial rat fink is R.F. in Southern California and mouse fink or straight arrow (a combination pill and moral paragon) in the Harvard Yard. But though a tool in Florida is a dullard, a tool in the academic machinery of M.I.T. is merely a diligent studier. A tooler at the University of Texas is a showoff, the equivalent of a cake-eater at Detroit’s Wayne State, and a vest at George Washington University.
Flagged by Flunkenstein. Grades, being serious news, need casual names. A’s are aces, C’s are hooks, D’s are dandies or dogs, E’s are eagles and F’s are frongs or keepers. (B’s are B’s.) A University of Florida student who Christmas-trees it with flunkenstein is one who marks the answers on a multiple-choice exam in a repetitive pattern without reading the questions, then gets a failing grade from an IBM machine. A flunking student has flagged it, flushed it or tubed it.
Old customs require new, uncustomary terms. Folk singers in Washington, D.C., strum the strings of an ax. At Chicago a strong drinker is a long hitter; at the University of Texas those who can’t hold it crash and burn under the table. A bag is an object, group or mood. I am in a pizza bag means “I want pizza.” Where is the beard bag? means “Where are the beatniks?”
As always, coeds search for their Sam-sex appeal plus magnetism-and boys prowl for bugs. A sexy bug is also a tough (or tuff), tough head, tough fox or stone fox. If the boy is a blip, he is said to be whipped by an ugly stick. But if boy and girl are stoked about each other, they mouse or scarf, which is the same as playing huggy-bear, smacky lips, smash-mouth and kissy face.
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