Here’s where your favourite slang words actually came from

Most people may think this word originated with MC Hammer after he released his 1991 hit, 2 Legit 2 Quit, but it actually showed up during the later half of the 19th century in theatre groups. They used the word to refer to “legitimate drama,” also known as a well-written piece.

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Adulting is a very popular word among Millennials, who look often use it jokingly when they engage in adult-like behaviour such as preparing taxes, buying a home, or mowing the lawn. The exact origins are a little murky, but it supposedly first showed up in a 2008 Twitter post.

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Throwing shade could be an Olympic sport, as it clearly requires mad skill! The word was first propelled into the mainstream after its excessive use on RuPaul’s reality TV show Drag Race, and now everyone from fathers to grandmothers uses it to carry out passive aggressive acts online and IRL (in real life).

No matter how you use it, ghosting never means anything good. The act of ghosting, which describes someone quietly exiting an online conversation, has become popular because of the explosion of the dating app culture over the last few years. There’s no clear origin story for this word but it seems to have organically arisen in the post-2012 dating app boom.

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Most commonly used to describe a person who is over-the-top in some way, dramatic, or “doing the most,” extra has become somewhat of a fixture when it comes to Millennial slang vocabulary. Extra first appeared in Urban Dictionary back in 2003, however, according to dictionary.com, its origins are Latin, and was often used in Medieval times to mean to be outside or beyond.

Basic is a pejorative adjective used to describe someone who slavishly follows the mainstream and is a conformist, according to knowyourmeme.com. There is just nothing original or special about this person. Although the term gained more relevance in 2017, it’s been around for a while – basic first appeared on Urban Dictionary in 2009.

No longer is salty simply used to describe food; it now applies to people. According to Online Etymology dictionary, salty has transitioned from its 15th-century definition of impregnated with salt to its 1866 meaning of racy to its modern meaning of angry or irritated – which gained relevance in 1938 but has been heard spoken by teens and Millennials in 2017.

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Ah, the hipster: a person who was originally celebrated for being on the cutting edge of a trend before it became mainstream, but is now known as a ‘know-it-all’ who wants to appear cooler than the masses. In all seriousness, the word is a derivation of the word hip, which means to be tapped into the cultural zeitgeist. It first gained traction in the 20th-century jazz era, when people flocked to African American neighbourhoods to participate in the budding music scene. The word faded out in the ’50s but resurfaced in the ’90s and has stayed for quite a while.

For some odd reason, the act of spoiling a photograph by unexpectedly popping into the picture is pretty satisfying. Photobombing has been around for a while, with Google Trends indicating that it was used as far back as 2009. But this past year seemed to re-energise the word with A-List celebrities photobombing all over the place. There was Tom Hanks photobombing a wedding, Justin Timberlake photobombing Emma Stone on the red carpet, and Jennifer Lawrence photobombing everyone.

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There are multiple definitions of the word dope: drugs, a fool, a thick lubricant, and something good. More recently, the word has been used to describe people, things, or situations that are impressive. However, the word originates from the Dutch word doop, which means sauce. They then further refined the word to dope and used it to refer to idiots. Then in the early 1800s, it came to describe any thick lubricant. Eventually, it came to more specifically describe the goop-like brown gunk known as opium.