Brave New Word

First blush for campus slang? Well, it really spawns a blush.... lots of profane language litters the collegiate jargon set. Could this be a rite of passage? A symbolic, verbal freedom? The rebellious, semantic equivalent to one's first year away from home? Freedom of expression clearly possesses childhood, youth, prime and twilight phases. Campus profanity seems like the oral equivalent to a kid who's just figured out how to get to the cookie jar without mom looking... and the crumbs are everywhere.

In any case, there are a number of colorful metaphors for otherwise common terms... and that may be the key to campus slang: finding the most colorful, but socio-culturally implicit, metaphor. What fun is it to talk like this if your professors understand you? Consider:

"swimming wit the sharks"

"swerrrvin'"

"twirking' it"

"crushin' it"

"2 steppin"

"gettin' fresh"

"swiss cheese someone"

"gettin' crispy"

"gettin' on my gear"

"get my snack on"

"smash"

"beat it up"

"bank him"

"smush" (with a long "u" sound")

"put him on blast"

"clown him"

"dog for life"

"tappin' it"

"I'd hit that"

"grinding"

"my person"

"spent"


No definitions listed here, yet... I want you to have some fun with short identification... a sort of preliminary jargon aptitude test (a P-JAT).

Would it surprise you to learn what percentage of these submissions were generated by fraternity brothers? Probably not. And campus-wide, there are more metaphors for sex than all other categories I invited combined. I didn't even list them all. (Horizontal tango left nothing to my imagination... but it is an amusing picture... can you picture it?)

So in addition to picking up the metaphorical connection to community language, I'm also picking up the feeling that verbal freedom is as much about physical expression as it is about connecting to the language of your peers.

Got more? Send them in!

Another Day

Trying to shake the latest onslaught of rhinovirus, I consider a new direction for this tired, web-beaten path. No more personal crap, no more senseless, irrelevant ranting.... how about something equally meaningless, but which people might actually (pretend) to care about?

How about cultural literacy? How about words that really matter? How about campus slang?

So, I'll need a little help from current campus denizens... folks who are fluent in the dialect.

What are the current terms for... let's see... tired? slammed with work? ready to go out? in trouble? dancing? broke? having sex? Can I say that here?

How about the latest terms for good-looking guy/girl? stupid person? bitch-who-backstabbed-you? funny friend? best friend?

And, more seriously, what's the current language of violence? fighting?

Send me an e-mail: rashworth@vcu.edu

Day One

A day like any other day in this digital paradise. A knock on the (virtual) door. Then another, sharper, more insistent. "Come in," I say, the edge of yesterday's web-induced headache still evident in the tone of my audio, still partially visible on my soft screen. And did he ever, crashing through the implied geometric order of my doorway like an ill-conceived algorhythm, throwing fractals with every glance. He looked through me like electricity through an acrylic block. I felt another headache starting... I could already see the amber glow...