See also
- The Hipster Handbook , 2003 satirical guide to hipster culture
- Valspeak
Grunge speak was a hoax series of slang words purportedly connected to the subculture of grunge in Seattle, reported as fact in The New York Times in 1992. The collection of alleged slang words were coined by a record label worker in response to a journalist asking if grunge musicians and enthusiasts had their own slang terms, seeking to write a piece on the subject. They were essentially made up on the spot; there was no such vernacular among members of the grunge scene, and the terms that were published were merely a prank on the news industry's tendencies to seize upon trends.
The words later labelled "grunge speak" were coined by Megan Jasper, then aged 25 and working for Caroline Records. [1] She had previously worked for Sub Pop Records, whose co-founder Jonathan Poneman referred journalists to her, ostensibly for her inside knowledge of grunge, but also because of her prankish streak. [1] She was telephoned first by UK magazine SKY and later by Rick Marin for The New York Times. [1] Poneman forewarned Jasper that Marin was seeking "a lexicon of grunge"; Jasper recalled Marin explaining, "Every subculture has a different way of speaking and there's got to be words and phrases and things that you folks say." [2] Jasper tested her interviewers' gullibility by supplying invented slang expressions of increasing ridiculousness. [1]
A coverline on the September 1992 issue of SKY said "like, harsh realm, man — How to hang out in Seattle", trailing a four-page article which mentioned some of Jasper's expressions. Seattle band Mudhoney saw the article while on tour in the UK and joined in the joke by reusing some terms in an interview with Melody Maker . [3] [4] Marin's article, "Grunge: A Success Story", appeared in The New York Times on November 15, 1992, as a full page story in its Sunday "Styles" section. The article begins with an investigation on the origin of the term "grunge" and concludes with a summary of grunge music and fashion. Jasper's invented terms were published as a sidebar to Marin's story, titled "Lexicon of Grunge: Breaking the Code" and crediting Jasper for "this lexicon of grunge-speak". The list was reprinted by the Ottawa Citizen in December. [5]
Thomas Frank was skeptical of the Times' lexicon, and contacted Jasper, who "readily admitted" the fabrication, as Frank reported in the Winter–Spring 1993 issue of The Baffler . [1] [3] The Baffler story was picked up by news media, including Calvin Trillin's syndicated column. [6] [7] When the Times got back to Jasper, she initially denied Frank's claims, so the Times demanded an apology from Frank. Instead, he sent a letter standing by the story: "When The Newspaper of Record goes searching for the Next Big Thing and the Next Big Thing piddles on its leg, we think that's funny." [8] He considered the article to be part of an attempt by mainstream culture to co-opt the grunge scene and felt that the Times had gotten what it deserved. Jasper later ascribed her initial denial to a fear that Marin or "Styles" editor Penelope Green would be fired. [1] Green commented to the New York Observer , "Our piece was tongue-in-cheek, so I guess [the hoax] works. But how irritating." [7] She prepared a correction but the Times never published it. [1]
The following were in the Times lexicon:
Jasper had also offered tuna platter ("a hot date"), and regretted that it had not appeared in the article. [2] [9]
Daniel House, the head of C/Z Records commissioned Art Chantry to design a lexicon T-shirt after people started wearing the sidebar from the article pinned to their shirts at grunge shows. Chantry's design featured "Lamestain" or "Harsh Realm" on the front, with an enlarged copy of the lexicon sidebar on the back. [1]
Harsh Realm was a 1994 comic book series by James D. Hudnall and Andrew Paquette, set in a future of multiple virtual realities, one of which was a dystopia called "Harsh Realm". [10] In 1999 Chris Carter adapted the Harsh Realm comics into a television series of the same name. [11]
In Adam Warren's comic The Dirty Pair , the characters' futuristic slang includes "harsh realm" in the grunge-speak sense.[ citation needed ]
Bass guitarist Dave Brockie's stage persona in the band X-Cops was "Ex-Patrolman Cobb Knobbler". [12]
The 1996 documentary Hype! included Jasper's prank in its exploration of the early 1990s grunge scene. [13]
Into The Pit: Metal Artist Panel. Moderator: Dave Brockie of Gwar/X-Cops fame (aka Oderus Urungus. Ex-Patrolman Cobb Knobbler)
Nadsat is a fictional register or argot used by the teenage gang members in Anthony Burgess's dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange. Burgess was a linguist and he used this background to depict his characters as speaking a form of Russian-influenced English. The name comes from the Russian suffix equivalent of -teen as in thirteen. Nadsat was also used in Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of the book.
Grunge is an alternative rock genre and subculture which emerged during the mid-1980s in the U.S. state of Washington, particularly in Seattle and nearby towns. Grunge fuses elements of punk rock and heavy metal. The genre featured the distorted electric guitar sound used in both genres, although some bands performed with more emphasis on one or the other. Like these genres, grunge typically uses electric guitar, bass guitar, drums and vocals. Grunge also incorporates influences from indie rock bands such as Sonic Youth. Lyrics are typically angst-filled and introspective, often addressing themes such as social alienation, self-doubt, abuse, neglect, betrayal, social and emotional isolation, addiction, psychological trauma and a desire for freedom.
A valley girl is a socioeconomic, linguistic, and youth subcultural stereotype and stock character originating during the 1980s: any materialistic upper-middle-class young woman, associated with unique vocal and California dialect features, from the Los Angeles commuter communities of the San Fernando Valley. The term in later years was more broadly applied to any woman in the United States who embodied ditziness, airheadedness, or greater interest in conspicuous consumption than in intellectual or personal accomplishment.
Alternative rock is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s with the likes of the grunge, shoegaze, and Britpop subgenres in the United States and United Kingdom, respectively. During this period, many record labels were looking for "alternatives", as many corporate rock, hard rock, and glam metal acts from the 1980s were beginning to grow stale throughout the music industry. The emergence of Generation X as a cultural force in the 1990s also contributed greatly to the rise of alternative rock.
LOL, or lol, is an initialism for laughing out loud and a popular element of Internet slang. It was first used almost exclusively on Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even face-to-face communication. It is one of many initialisms for expressing bodily reactions, in particular laughter, as text, including initialisms for more emphatic expressions of laughter such as LMAO and ROFL or ROTFL.
LGBT slang, LGBT speak, queer slang, or gay slang is a set of English slang lexicon used predominantly among LGBTQ+ people. It has been used in various languages since the early 20th century as a means by which members of the LGBTQ+ community identify themselves and speak in code with brevity and speed to others. The acronym LGBT was popularized in the 1990s and stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender. It may refer to anyone who is non-heterosexual or non-cisgender, instead of exclusively to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. To recognize this inclusion, a popular variant, LGBTQ, adds the letter Q for those who identify as queer or are questioning their sexual or gender identity.
Faggot, often shortened to fag in American usage, is a term, usually a pejorative, used to refer to gay men. In American youth culture around the turn of the 21st century, its meaning extended as a broader reaching insult more related to masculinity and group power structure.
The Baffler is an American magazine of cultural, political, and business analysis. Established in 1988 by editors Thomas Frank and Keith White, it was headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, until 2010, when it moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2016, it moved its headquarters to New York City. The first incarnation of The Baffler had up to 12,000 subscribers.
Harsh Realm is an American science fiction television series about humans trapped inside a virtual reality simulation. It was developed by Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files and Millennium, and began airing on the Fox Network on October 8, 1999. The series fared poorly in the ratings and was removed from the schedule after three of its nine episodes had aired. The remaining six episodes premiered on the FX Network. Repeats of the series began airing Fall 2007 on CBC Country Canada.
Heroin chic is a style popularized in early-1990s fashion and characterized by pale skin, dark circles underneath the eyes, emaciated features, androgyny and stringy hair—all traits associated with abuse of heroin or other drugs. American supermodel Gia Carangi is remembered for being the originator of the trend. Heroin chic was partly a reaction against the healthy and vibrant look of leading 1980s models such as Cindy Crawford, Elle Macpherson, and Claudia Schiffer. A 1996 article in the Los Angeles Times stated that the fashion industry had "a nihilistic vision of beauty" that was reflective of drug addiction.
Caló is an argot or slang of Mexican Spanish that originated during the first half of the 20th century in the Southwestern United States. It is the product of zoot-suit pachuco culture that developed in the 1930s and '40s in cities along the US/Mexico border.
Urban Dictionary is a crowdsourced English-language online dictionary for slang words and phrases. The website was founded in 1999 by Aaron Peckham. Originally, Urban Dictionary was intended as a dictionary of slang or cultural words and phrases, not typically found in standard English dictionaries, but it is now used to define any word, event, or phrase. Words or phrases on Urban Dictionary may have multiple definitions, usage examples, and tags. As of 2014, the dictionary contains over seven million definitions, while around 2,000 new entries were being added daily. Urban Dictionary has also become a repository for racist, bigoted, sexist and anti-semitic postings.
Literary realism is a literary genre, part of the broader realism in arts, that attempts to represent subject-matter truthfully, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. It originated with the realist art movement that began with mid-nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal) and Russian literature. Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict every day and banal activities and experiences.
Fruit, fruity, and fruitcake, as well as its many variations, are slang or even sexual slang terms which have various origins. These terms have often been used derogatorily to refer to LGBT people. Usually used as pejoratives, the terms have also been re-appropriated as insider terms of endearment within LGBT communities. Many modern pop culture references within the gay nightlife like "Fruit Machine" and "Fruit Packers" have been appropriated for reclaiming usage, similar to queer.
The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Carnegie Mellon University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It was published in paperback form in 1983 as The Hacker's Dictionary, revised in 1991 as The New Hacker's Dictionary.
Jonathan Poneman is an American record executive and co-founder of two record labels: Sub Pop and Hardly Art. He was credited by Kurt Cobain as the one who coined the term "grunge.”
The Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures, alternatively Ten Baidu Deities, was a humorous hoax from the interactive encyclopedia Baidu Baike which became a popular and widespread Internet meme in China in early 2009.
Terms related to cannabis include: