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Apr 27, 2018 · Book – The need to get somewhere immediately. Example: Dude, I can’t talk right now. I need to book home to get my bike. Having a righteous boom box was essential in the 1980s. Boom Box – A large portable music player. Example: My boom box has a dual cassette and a CD player. It’s totally fly. Burned – A harsh outcome.
- Best Life Editors
- Not even. "Not even" is a quick way of saying, "I think you're wrong, but I'm too lazy to get into a whole thing where I list the reasons why." If the person you're talking to retorts with "even," then the argument is officially over.
- Gag me with a spoon. "Gag me with a spoon" is an expression you can use when you want to show disgust or disappointment and it's not enough just to say, "I disapprove."
- Have a cow. In the '80s, if you were getting overly emotional or upset about something, you were "having a cow." How exactly this cow was being had is open to interpretation—but really, there's no good literal or metaphorical way to have it.
- No duh. When someone utters something that is extremely obvious and apparent, there were a lot of "no duhs" in response in the '80s. Example: "Do you think growing a rat tail was maybe not the best look for me?"
Jul 7 Jineane Ford of Arizona replaces Shawn Weatherly (Miss Universe) as the 29th Miss USA. Jul 7 Shawn Weatherly, of USA, crowned 29th Miss Universe. Jul 7 The Safra massacre in Lebanon. Jul 8 51st All Star Baseball Game: NL wins 4-2 at Dodger Stadium, LA. Jul 8 All star MVP: Ken Griffey (Cincinnati Reds)
- Rad & Radical
- Gag Me with A Spoon
- Betty
- Bad
- Epic
- Psychedelic
- Trippin’
- Bite Me
- Bodacious
- Totally Tubular
I thought this would be a great one to start with, since I used radical as a superlative in the title of this post HAHA! It’s clearly my favorite of these 80’s slang terms, and the one I say most commonly. ‘Radical’ and ‘Rad’basically mean awesome, outrageous and cool (I don’t mean the temperature). If “cool” is sounding a bit tired and old, this w...
As long as your friends don’t take this one too literally,‘Gag me with a spoon’is a hilarious catchphrase that I’d love to see on a t-shirt. If you haven’t already deciphered it, gag me with a spoon is used as an expression of annoyance or disgust. Pretty much saying you would rather be gagged with a spoon, than do something or deal with a certain ...
I love this one, especially with Taylor Swift’s song reminding me of it whenever I listen to her Folklore album. A Bettyis someone you think is pretty, fabulous or a babe, usually a girl or a woman.
Now, hold on! This one’s not as simple as it seems. Bad isn’t bad, it’s good. Really. Like saying ‘sick’. I know this is confusing but trust me, it’s really a phrase coined from the 80’s. It’s fun to use and you totally sound like a genuine 80’s baby. “Wow! That’s so bad!”
This is another word I use often. Though classically the word means a story or poem, usually about an ancient journey of sorts, that’s not the definition I’m referring to. I use epic to describe something exciting, awesome and fun. Next time you go to say “That’s so awesome!!” you could stop, consider not sounding like an average American teen, and...
This word can sometimes be associated with drugs, specifically LSD, so let me start with a warning, if someone offers you a “Psychedelic Trip,” it’s in your best interest to turn them down. Given the drug connection, I’m almost certain this word really comes to us from the 1970s but it was still very commonly used in the 1980s, and I would argue sh...
I don’t mean trippin’ as in stumbling over your shoe laces and causing a stubbed toe, no indeed. I mean another 80’s slang term derived from drugs. Here again let’s forget the drugs and keep the word. Trippin’(‘tripping’ works too, but I like the twang that comes from dropping the ‘g’) is a term you would use to tell someone they are wrong or crazy...
This one is fun. Put simply “bite me” is a threat. If someone’s trying to mess with you or get up in your face, ‘Bite me’ is one way to tell them to back off or there will betrouble. I mean, what psycho would tell you to bite them? JKJK But really, if you want to tell someone to leave you alone, tell them to bite you.
This one might sound a little weird at first, and it is LOL! If you add this 80’s slang term to your personal dictionary, you can use it to describe someone attractive, bold, or gutsy. It’s often combined with ‘babe’ making the phrase ‘bodaciousbabe’.
This one is so, classically, 80’s! I was first introduced to ‘Totally Tubular’ at a summer camp I attended several years back. The leaders put on a skit where they dressed as bodacious babes and dealt with a very compromising situation — one of them didn’t have enough Aqua Net for the school dance they were attending! Don’t worry, the others had em...
Looking at 1980s slang is an interesting and captivating way to notice how the slang of yesterday connects with the slang of today.
July 2, 1980 (Wednesday) The government of Poland announced that the price for consumer goods was being increased, after 14 years of prices being maintained at the same level with government subsidies. Two previous attempts to raise the price of meat— in December 1970 and June 1976— had been rescinded after rioting.
Aug 27, 2021 · One of the defining linguistic phenomena of the 1980s was Val-speak, a dialect of English spoken by Valley Girls. These were the mostly white, mostly upper-middle-class young women who lived in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles. The stereotype of the Valley Girl really began in the 1970s, but it started to spread in the ’80s.
