This week’s newsletter from Grammarphobia was all about sweating the small stuff, but the root of this slang expression is another slang expression: don’t sweat it. So here is an older post – would 2016 be considered ancient? – explaining its origin.

Q: As someone who ranks high on the perspiration index, I was wondering when the phrase “don’t sweat it” came about.

A: “Don’t sweat it” first showed up in print about 50 years ago, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, but we’ve found a similar expression that appeared in writing 50 years before that.

The OED describes “don’t sweat it” as American slang for “don’t worry.” The dictionary says a positive colloquial version, “to sweat,” means “to experience discomfort through anxiety or unease.”

The earliest example for “don’t sweat it” in Oxford is from a 1963 issue of the journal American Speech: “Don’t sweat it means ‘don’t worry about it.’ ”

However, we’ve found this similar usage in the Dec. 12, 1914, issue of Happy Days, a New York weekly newspaper:

“ ‘What’s the meeting for, anyway?’ said Paul Braddon. ‘Keep your shirt on, and don’t sweat it off,’ said Deacon Small.”

The first positive citation (grammatically speaking) in the OED is from The Hungarian Game, a 1973 espionage thriller by Roy Hayes:

“ ‘Hold off for a moment. I want to watch him sweat.’ ‘The guy’s about to faint from pain.’ ”

As you can imagine, the verb “sweat” in its literal sense is very old, dating back to Anglo-Saxon times. The infinitive was swætan in Old English and meant (as it does today) to emit perspiration through the pores of the skin.

The first example in the OED is from the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (circa 900):

He swa swiðe swætte swa in swole middes sumeres (“He so sweated strongly in the mid-summer heat”).

The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology says that “sweat” is ultimately derived from the proto-Germanic root swaita-, and that it has given us such words and phrases as “sweater” (1882, the garment), “sweatshop” (1889), and “sweatshirt” (1929).

If you aren’t reading the Conscious Style Newsletter, I highly recommend it.

By Steve Bien-Aimé • August 1, 2017

Media commentators have spent the past few months opining on the chasm between the economically rich and poor—more specifically, the so-called well educated versus the less educated. I, too, want to offer my thoughts, albeit from an inclusive-language perspective. As a language scholar, I’m always interested in how words can elevate people or tear groups down.

Journalists and other advanced-degree holders have resorted to labeling others as “poorly educated” or, worse, “uneducated.” A June 13 Washington Post article on smoking demographics reported that formal-education attainment is correlated with smoking. The article said that the benefits from decreased smoking have helped millions “unless those Americans are poor, uneducated or live in a rural area.” The article explains what “less educated” means, sort of: “those with a high-school-equivalency diploma.”

People who live in rural areas are not necessarily poor or uneducated.

Share Capturing Voices

This conflates a lot of data. People who live in rural areas are not necessarily poor or uneducated. In fact, in the same piece, a smoking-cessation expert was quoted as saying that stress over family and money contributed greatly to tobacco addiction.

But this column isn’t about who smokes and who doesn’t smoke. It’s about who gets to call somebody educated and uneducated. Linguistic and cultural scholars would argue that this power comes to those who have power in society. Dictionaries hold a lot of linguistic power, so let’s take a look at one.

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines uneducated as “having or showing little or no formal schooling.” Before exploring why some view uneducated as a pejorative, it’s difficult to even agree who is uneducated. According to the U.S. Department of Education, roughly a quarter of U.S. adults 25 and older (22.6 percent of men and 26.3 percent of women) had completed at least high school in 1940. It could be said then that folks with high school degrees were highly educated.

Some of the richest people in the world are “less educated,” including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

Today, most people have a high school diploma. In the 2014–15 school year, 83 percent of students earned high school degrees with their cohorts. That is a significant gain from 1940, but the value of high school degrees has diminished. Many occupations now require a college degree when, decades ago, a high school degree was sufficient (example: journalist). Some argue that many jobs designated for college graduates actually do not require a college education.

However, why is the distinction between “well educated” and “poorly educated”? If the overwhelming majority of people have high school degrees, then why aren’t high school graduates called “sufficiently educated,” for example? A record 33.4 percent of American adults now have college degrees; that means two-thirds of the adult population don’t—and, by extension, are “less educated.”

Some of the richest people in the world are “less educated,” including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Do not interpret this piece as a condemnation of college degrees. As a university professor, I encourage people to attend college as I believe that the benefits of higher education serve people well throughout their lives. Gates himself encourages people to attend colleges and universities while noting that there are many reasons why people don’t attend or finish college. (A good primer on higher-education issues is Paying the Price by Temple University professor Sara Goldrick-Rab.)

We could be precise and just identify people’s actual education levels.

Perhaps one of the reasons we’re experiencing societal polarization is because we’re not using inclusive language more. People catch on to euphemisms, and calling folks “less educated” is akin to calling them stupider than another group. In fact, it’s downright cruel to practice what in many cases equates to privilege shaming.

I know I would not listen to people who discount my experiences because of some arbitrary standard. We could be precise and just identify people’s actual education levels. As people who seek to engage in inclusivity, let’s not privilege college degrees ahead of less formal but important life experiences.

Steve Bien-Aimé is an assistant professor of journalism at Northern Kentucky University. Before receiving his doctorate from Penn State’s College of Communications, Steve worked as a copy editor at The News Journal in Delaware and The Baltimore Sun and served in a variety of functions at FOXSports.com, departing as deputy NFL editor. His research interests include race and gender portrayals in news and sports media.

If you aren’t reading the Conscious Style Newsletter, I highly recommend it.

By Steve Bien-Aimé • August 1, 2017

Media commentators have spent the past few months opining on the chasm between the economically rich and poor—more specifically, the so-called well educated versus the less educated. I, too, want to offer my thoughts, albeit from an inclusive-language perspective. As a language scholar, I’m always interested in how words can elevate people or tear groups down.

Journalists and other advanced-degree holders have resorted to labeling others as “poorly educated” or, worse, “uneducated.” A June 13 Washington Post article on smoking demographics reported that formal-education attainment is correlated with smoking. The article said that the benefits from decreased smoking have helped millions “unless those Americans are poor, uneducated or live in a rural area.” The article explains what “less educated” means, sort of: “those with a high-school-equivalency diploma.”

People who live in rural areas are not necessarily poor or uneducated.

Share Capturing Voices

This conflates a lot of data. People who live in rural areas are not necessarily poor or uneducated. In fact, in the same piece, a smoking-cessation expert was quoted as saying that stress over family and money contributed greatly to tobacco addiction.

But this column isn’t about who smokes and who doesn’t smoke. It’s about who gets to call somebody educated and uneducated. Linguistic and cultural scholars would argue that this power comes to those who have power in society. Dictionaries hold a lot of linguistic power, so let’s take a look at one.

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines uneducated as “having or showing little or no formal schooling.” Before exploring why some view uneducated as a pejorative, it’s difficult to even agree who is uneducated. According to the U.S. Department of Education, roughly a quarter of U.S. adults 25 and older (22.6 percent of men and 26.3 percent of women) had completed at least high school in 1940. It could be said then that folks with high school degrees were highly educated.

Some of the richest people in the world are “less educated,” including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

Today, most people have a high school diploma. In the 2014–15 school year, 83 percent of students earned high school degrees with their cohorts. That is a significant gain from 1940, but the value of high school degrees has diminished. Many occupations now require a college degree when, decades ago, a high school degree was sufficient (example: journalist). Some argue that many jobs designated for college graduates actually do not require a college education.

However, why is the distinction between “well educated” and “poorly educated”? If the overwhelming majority of people have high school degrees, then why aren’t high school graduates called “sufficiently educated,” for example? A record 33.4 percent of American adults now have college degrees; that means two-thirds of the adult population don’t—and, by extension, are “less educated.”

Some of the richest people in the world are “less educated,” including Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Do not interpret this piece as a condemnation of college degrees. As a university professor, I encourage people to attend college as I believe that the benefits of higher education serve people well throughout their lives. Gates himself encourages people to attend colleges and universities while noting that there are many reasons why people don’t attend or finish college. (A good primer on higher-education issues is Paying the Price by Temple University professor Sara Goldrick-Rab.)

We could be precise and just identify people’s actual education levels.

Perhaps one of the reasons we’re experiencing societal polarization is because we’re not using inclusive language more. People catch on to euphemisms, and calling folks “less educated” is akin to calling them stupider than another group. In fact, it’s downright cruel to practice what in many cases equates to privilege shaming.

I know I would not listen to people who discount my experiences because of some arbitrary standard. We could be precise and just identify people’s actual education levels. As people who seek to engage in inclusivity, let’s not privilege college degrees ahead of less formal but important life experiences.

Steve Bien-Aimé is an assistant professor of journalism at Northern Kentucky University. Before receiving his doctorate from Penn State’s College of Communications, Steve worked as a copy editor at The News Journal in Delaware and The Baltimore Sun and served in a variety of functions at FOXSports.com, departing as deputy NFL editor. His research interests include race and gender portrayals in news and sports media.

And when you’re capturing the spoken word, slang is an essential part of your vocabulary!

enshittification

babygirl

skibidi

ice cream so good

millennial pause

gyatt

let them cook

LFG

tush push

delulu

stenographer

The internet keeps on supplying us with an endless stream of trendy slang words that come from anywhere—from bizarre TikTok streams and YouTube videos featuring sentient toilets—and everywhere in between.

Why are grown men called babygirl? What is the scuttlebutt on tush push and gyatt? What does it mean to be delulu? Are we doomed to a fate of enshittification? We have all of the answers to questions you may have been too scared to ask.

Content Note: As you might expect, some of these terms contain profanity.

enshittification

What it means: Enshittification is the gradual degradation of an online platform or service’s functionality, as part of a cycle in which the platform or service first offers benefits to users to attract them, then pursues more and more profits at the expense of users. You can probably guess why enshittification has become a popular word recently. 

Where it comes from: Enshittification was popularized by Canadian writer Cory Doctorow, who has used the word to describe the decline in quality of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.

Why linguists are interested: The American Dialect Society (ADS) chose enshittification as its 2023 Word of the Year. It was described as a “sadly apt” term to describe the decline of online platforms. It also earned points for being “instantly memorable” and having the ability to be used in a wide variety of contexts. 

Our lexicographers say: At Dictionary.com, we integrate slang (like enshittification) into our dictionaries to document its role in language evolution and to acknowledge its informal but significant impact. Lexicographers evaluate a slang term’s longevity and widespread use, analyzing its frequency, contexts—including internet culture and social media— and recognition by authoritative bodies, such as the ADS designation of enshittification as Word of the Year.

babygirl

What it means: Babygirl is a term of endearment that refers to attractive older male celebrities or fictional male characters. Babygirl is especially likely to be used to refer to a male that is seen as vulnerable, sensitive, cute, or submissive.  

Where it comes from: Traditionally, babygirl was a term of endearment used by men to refer to women. The reversal of babygirl to refer to men may originate with a photoshopped image of the comic Mob Psycho 100 that went viral. The trend seems to have been largely motivated by the humor of referring to grown men by the cutesy term babygirl. 

skibidi

What it means: Skibidi is a nonsense word or sound without a specific meaning.  

Where it comes from: We promise you that the next sentence is, in fact, true. The “word” skibidi comes from the extremely popular YouTube series “Skibidi Toilet,” which features sentient toilets with human heads battling humanoids with electronic devices for heads. The series has a theme song based on a remix of the song “Dom Dom Yes Yes” by Bulgarian singer Biser King. The word skibidi is an approximation of one of the nonsensical words Biser King says during the song. 

ice cream so good

What it means: Ice cream so good is a catchphrase of TikTok streamer PinkyDoll. 

Where it comes from: On Tiktok Live, viewers can send money to a streamer, and the donations are represented on-screen by stickers resembling objects. Ice cream so good was TikTok user PinkyDoll’s usual response for receiving a donation represented by an ice cream cone sticker. PinkyDoll is an NPC streamer, a term that refers to a person who streams themselves acting like a robotic NPC (nonplayer character) from a video game. The phrase ice cream so good is commonly used to refer either to PinkyDoll or NPC streaming in general.   

Our lexicographers say: Examples like skibidi and ice cream so good show the same hallmarks of informality, memorability, and timeliness as slang classics like booyah or keep on truckin’.

millennial pause

What it means: Millennial pause refers to a short delay before a person starts speaking when recording themselves for a video. 

Where it comes from: The term millennial pause is credited to TikTok user nisipisa, who used it in a November 2021 TikTok video about singer Taylor Swift. The millennial pause results from a person quickly checking that their phone is recording before speaking. The term millennial pause is often used by younger generations to playfully accuse millennials of getting too old for the internet. A similar term is used to describe the behavior of Generation Z. The Gen Z shake is the Gen Z equivalent to the millennial pause and refers to a phone shaking as a person puts it down at the beginning of a recorded video.  

gyatt

What it means: Gyatt is a slang exclamation of surprise or excitement. Gyatt is most commonly used as an exclamation in reaction to seeing a large butt (that is, the buttocks) and may be used as a noun to mean a large butt.

Where it comes from: Gyatt is an alteration of the word God in the phrase “God damn,” sometimes written as “Gyatt dayum.” The use of gyatt to refer to voluptuous women was popularized by Twitch streamer YourRAGE. 

let them cook

What it means: Let them cook is a slang phrase used as a command to let a person freely do something they are good at, without interference. The phrase is used with various pronoun constructions, such as let him cook or let her cook. 

Where it comes from: Let them cook and its many variations are often attributed to rapper Lil B, who has used the phrase since at least 2010. Lil B refers to himself as a “master chef” and uses the word cook in reference to his rapping prowess. The slang spread and became popular among sports fans to refer to letting an athlete play without holding them back. 

LFG

What it means: LFG is an abbreviation for “let’s fucking go.” It is often used to express hype and to rally others to action. 

Where it comes from: LFG is simply an abbreviation of “let’s fucking go.” This usage of LFG dates back to at least the early 2010s. The phrase let’s fucking go seems to have become more popular since the early 2020s. 

tush push

What it means: The tush push is a football play in which the quarterback receives the ball and is immediately pushed from behind by teammates. It’s a version of the play known as a quarterback sneak.

Where it comes from: The tush push play was popularized by the 2022 Philadelphia Eagles, who used it with significant success to reach the Super Bowl. The tush push name became popular in sports media to refer to the play following the 2022 season as the Eagles continued to use it and other teams adopted it. The play is also commonly referred to as the Brotherly Shove due to its close association with the Eagles, who play in Philadelphia, nicknamed the City of Brotherly Love.  

delulu

What it means: Delulu is a slang shortening of the word delusional. It is especially used to describe superfans or dating partners who display odd or extreme behavior.

Where it comes from: The slang delulu seems to have emerged from the Korean pop music (K-pop) fan community. As early as 2013, it was used to mock delusional fans who believed they could somehow become romantically involved with celebrities.  

Learn some of the slang terms that K-pop stans (delulu or not) have contributed to language within and beyond the fandom.

stenographer

What it means: Stenographer is a term for a journalist who uncritically repeats the words of politicians and other powerful individuals.

Where it comes from: A stenographer is a person whose job it is to copy down verbatim every word said in a courtroom. The slang term stenographer has been negatively used in media criticism since at least the 2000s. It is typically used by media critics who feel that journalists should use their platform to critically analyze and factcheck the words of the powerful rather than simply repeat them. In this context, the word stenographer is negatively equating a journalist to a person who simply writes down every word they hear without checking to see if those words are true.