The Online Slang Dictionary lists several hundred ways to say
“excellent” in modern slang. Some
are established words given a new or intensified meaning; others are coinages,
often nonsensical.
A very short list of
some the more familiar (and socially acceptable) words are awesome, bodacious, bomb diggity, crunk, epic, fly (and superfly), kick in the pants, gnarly, jinky, moff, phat, primo, righteous, rufus,
schway, sicknasty, skinny, skippy, snizzo, tuff, wizard—and my favorite,
which I can hardly wait to work into my next conversation, smoochie boochies.
Some of these words are
of recent invention. Others go
way, way back. Time Magazine recently had a chart showing the earliest known
use of many English words that have meant “excellent,”
starting in 1225 with special.
A few of the other
ear-catching examples with their years of origin are gay (1375), golden
(1400), tight (1607), spanking (1666), swell (1810), slick (1833),
hot (1845), nifty (1865), choice
(1880), fly (1896), ace (1929), cool (1933), solid (1935),
groovy (1937), and such later
twentieth-century usages as neato, bad
ass, smoking, radical, killer, crucial, bangin’, beast, and chronic.
The Bard of Buffalo
Bayou has been bodacious, bomb diggity, and decidedly phat for years, ever
since he was keeping cool with Coolidge.
My
pheet are phlat,
My
phingers phat,
My
phace is philled with phright.
My
phlesh is phlayed,
My
phemur phrayed--
In
phear I’d phain take phlight.
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