GR7

Do you ever feel completely out of touch with the English/American language that is spoken around you. Like you're listening to Shakespeare. You think these people are talking the same language as you, but you just don't get what they are saying. Not being from this country I often feel that way. Despite having lived here for quite a long time, I still come across words I do not understand. More often people feel that way about what I am saying. Fairly frequently someone will give me that blank look, smile and say some non-committal answer to a direct question. In fact I sometimes wonder when my good friends understand me all the time will they suddenly realize I am a completely different person to the one they thought I was.

But what I am talking about is more than an accent issue, it is the language that is developing around our kids and the teens of the world. We, the uneducated adults have no idea what they are talking about. Shakespeare makes much more sense. Or at least it can come with cliff notes. Well I just accidentally found the fountain of all knowledge with regards to street talk, in the form of urbandictionary.com .If you haven't checked this out let me enlighten you. It is really a dictionary of slang words and phrases and their meanings. Now some of them are lame and some are rude but here are some of my favorites.

Lets start with:-
gr7- just a little less than gr8 (great)-kind of how I feel right now. Of course a 5 letter word is so worth abbreviating.

Destinesia- when you arrive somewhere but have forgotten why you went there in the first place. - Why has it taken so long for me to discover this butchered English word that applies to me so often. I wonder if it is treatable with drugs or therapy.

Interneutering- when you loose your Internet connection. -This is my personal favorite. Maybe it is the latent feminist in me that just loves the word neuter used in any context.

Bus surfing- to ride the bus by standing in the middle of the aisle with out holding on to anything- like surfing. -Now this could be my sport. Here I come Olympics in 4 years :)

Thumb me- to encourage someone to send you a sms.- This shows how low tech I am. In fact I had to check that sms really did mean a text and not something way more rude.

Thumb lashing- to be told off via sms.- This shows how much our world has moved on from our youth when cell phones were brick sized.

Thumb war- Oh no wait, that is not in the dictionary. That is from our generation of good old thumb fights.

Last but not least:-
Bullshit Bingo- a game played in a meeting were the players write down management nonsense, like "out-of-the-box-thinking", on a sheet of paper. Every time a word or phrase is said they cross it off and the first to get a row crossed off wins and shouts "bullshit".

Absolutely classic.

Well there are 190 pages of these definitions. So if you are in need of a giggle or are wondering what the teenager next door said to you, check out urbandictionary.com.

Enjoy.