This is number 114 in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I GUESS I screwed the pooch on that one.
In case you aren’t up on 1960s slang, that means I made an embarrassing error. There was an older, more vulgar version as early as the 1930s that implied a major screw-up: ‘Fuck the dog and sell the pups.’ The screw the pooch version was around as early as the 1950s, but was popularized by the book and movie
The Right Stuff in 1979. The term is still around and still in use—especially by boomers.
Oh. My embarrassing error: I didn’t get a blog post up last week. BFD. Amirite?
BFD: Big Fucking Deal. Seems to have originated with the internet back in the late 60s and I’m told it was used in the movie
Forrest Gump. However, it’s a sarcastic response. It’s used to downplay or denigrate a comment or statement. “You got a participation trophy? BFD.”
Amirite: More internet slang for Am I Right? Feel free to answer ‘No!’
Where was I going with this?
Slang is common in everyday usage. It’s less common and generally frowned upon in formal writing. But it creeps in, even in the most proper environments. That includes in my books. Nothing more proper than that!
I wrote about teens in Iowa in the late 2010s and early 2020s in the
Team Manager series. I try to use normal language for the characters I write, sometimes using slang tossed in if I think it’s appropriate for the character.
I remember a discussion among fans regarding the meaning of the word ‘bae.’ Some thought I’d misspelled ‘babe.’ One attempted to mansplain it (give an unnecessary explanation of something the listener already knows—often incorrectly) as meaning ‘before all else.’ Bae is just a light endearment for a close friend or partner. Words that have been used over the ages for this include, babe, baby, dear, darling, love, lovey. and others. Like so many expressions, an explanation for the meaning is often invented after the fact rather than before.
By the time I wrote the final book of the series,
COACH!, I was becoming immersed in women’s basketball and discovered the rules and terms of the game that I’d grown up with had changed dramatically. Instead of simply having two guards, two forwards, and a center, we had a point guard, a shooting guard, a small forward, a power forward, and a center who was also sometimes referred to as the post. They were often referred to as simply numbers 1-5. I learned terms like ‘dime:’ a pass from one player to another that is perfectly placed, ‘pick and roll:’ when one player sets a block for a ball handler then leaves that point to rush for the basket expecting a pass, and ‘the paint:’ the area between the foul line and the basket that we used to call the keyhole or just the key.
I watch both college and professional women’s basketball these days and learn new terms all the time.
COACH! and the entire
Team Manager series can be found on ZBookStore and SOL.
One of the biggest dangers of using slang, even when a character would normally use it, is misusing a term. I’m reminded of the woman who received notice that an acquaintance had died and sent her condolences via text to all the friends, ending the text with ‘LOL.’ She thought the text slang meant Lots Of Love instead of Laughing Out Loud.
Another problem is overusing the terms. In a draft of one book I wrote—Nathan Everett's (Wayzgoose) Jackie the Beanstalk—two girls camping had received a couple of marijuana cigarettes from another camper. My first editor asked if I’d intentionally tried to use every term for cannabis I could find. I had used nearly all of them: joint, blunt, MaryJane, 420, doobie, ganja, weed, roach, and grass, among others. One problem was that most of those weren’t commonly in use by the generation of my characters. Not only had I overused slang in describing cannabis, it wasn’t even the right slang!
I corrected it, by the way.
Trying to make things proper when they should be eliminated altogether is another problem. According to a popular meme:
Quick question: Is it "for fuck sake" or "for fucks sake"? It's for a work email, so it has to sound professional.
Here are a few additional slang terms that I’ve come across that might show up in dialog, in no particular order.
Rizz: romance or flirt. ‘I’m going to rizz up Cathy and ask her out.’ ‘She’s got so much rizz.’
Ate that and left no crumbs: used when someone has done an excellent or flawless job at something. Interestingly, this also has a hand gesture that I often see on the bench at basketball games. One hand is positioned as if holding a plate near the mouth while the other hand mimics scooping food from the imaginary plate into her mouth. Often used after a spectacular play or when a team has just won a game.
Cap: Lying. ‘I’m dating Shirley.’ ‘That’s cap.’
Skibidi toilet: Nonsense term that can mean either something very good or something very bad, depending on the inflection. ‘Saturday night was skibidi toilet.’
Brain rot: Consuming too much online content to the detriment of your mental state. ‘I’ve got brain rot from watching Tik Tok all day.’
Bruh: Bro, fella, guy, mate, pal. Apparently, bro was too long a term. ‘Ain’t that right, bruh?’
Ohio: Something that sucks. ‘Your class is the Ohio of my schedule.’ Is it an insult to a great state? Perhaps, but let’s not forget that in Ohio it is illegal to disrobe in front of a
picture of a man!
Spoons: Amount of physical or mental energy a person has available for daily activities. This is usually used by people with chronic illness, disabilities, mental health issues, and marginalization. ‘I didn’t have the spoons to make dinner. I went to bed without.’ Personally, I didn’t understand the term until I fought AFib and simply had no energy for anything. I’d sit staring at my coffee pot with a kettle of hot water beside it, but didn’t have the spoons to pour the water over the coffee. It’s real.
Red Flag: A warning, especially when concerning someone you have a romantic interest in. ‘She collects Barbie dolls. That’s just a red flag for me.’
Ship: Make a romantic relationship happen. While it is used for IRL relationships (in real life), it got a lot of popularity with fan fiction writers who took characters from a novel who had no relationship to each other and put them in a romantic relationship in their story. ‘I’m shipping Harry (Potter) and Draco (Malfoy) in my new story!’
No Kings: Protest against overreaching authorities. Popularized in protests against the government across America on June 14, the phrase can also be used in social circumstances when one person attempts to dominate a conversation or a project, or to make rules others disagree with. ‘Hey, Ralph! No kings!’
I’ve been writing this blog for a little over two years now. It might be time to take a break, or at least not pretend to post weekly. I’ve missed posts in January, May, and June this year. It's also become difficult to estimate readership on SOL since the server move. This past week, with no post, I had a record number of blog views recorded. I’m guessing we’re subject to a robot invasion.
So, I’ll say the posts will be irregular this summer. I have no idea what will catch my eye as I’m traveling, but when something does, I’ll tell you all about it.
In the meantime, I’m working hard at finishing a couple of books and plotting my Halloween story for this year. I’d like to get those under control as my writing priority instead of procrastinating by writing clever blogs.