English dictionary, thesaurus, translations & etymology

Slang Dictionary — Modern Slang, Decoded

What does that word actually mean? Our slang dictionary explains modern slang clearly — Gen Z, internet, British and street slang — with real definitions, examples and where each term came from.

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Gen Z Slangrizz, delulu, slay Internet Slangbrainrot, based, mid British Slangpeng, bare, peak AAVEbussin, finna, cap

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The aggressive playstyle: get in, stay in, and never let the opponent breathe. Fast normals, strong mixups and relentless pressure until something opens up. The polar opposite of a zoner.

Catching someone right after a fight, low on resources, and blasting them down before they heal. Big special-attack weapon, one combo, dead.

A British Army commissioned officer — particularly a young, posh, Sandhurst-fresh one. The squaddies' name for the officer class, ranging from mildly affectionate to openly contemptuous depending on tone and how the Rupert in question is performing. The Hugh Grant of military slang.

The central performance space at a ball — and the category built on walking it. You strut down like it's fashion week: straight-aways, poses, the look. Femme runway tends to stay clean and elegant, straight up and down with sharp poses and minimal antics; male runway leaves room for extra attitude, shade and stunts. It's couture cosplay with stakes — sell the fantasy from the moment you step off.

running the pass

The chef (or senior sous) standing at the pass calling tickets, timing courses across stations, wiping rims, dropping the final garnish and waving plates out the door. It's the highest-pressure job in the kitchen during service — you're conducting six stations, reading the dining room, and refusing to send anything that doesn't look right. Gordon Ramsay built a whole TV career on it.

Trainers. Any athletic-style shoe — Nikes, Adidas, the lot. The default Irish word; no jogging required to qualify.

Spawn points on the Dota map drop runes on a timer. Grab one for a short burst of power: haste, invis, double damage, regen. Controlling rune timings wins lanes and sets up ganks.

A rich dish of fish or mackerel simmered until thick in spiced coconut milk. Also 'run-dung'.

An emulation feature that runs the game several frames ahead and rolls back, so your inputs register sooner. It strips out the input lag that was baked into the original game, sometimes making the emulated version feel snappier than real hardware.

Take a finished plate from the kitchen window and deliver it to the correct seat at the correct table. "Food runners" are often a dedicated role; on a slammed night any server, busser or manager who's hands-free gets pulled to run. The expo calls it, the runner moves.

A rumor or the word going around; the buzz. Synonymous with 'radio bemba' and 'la bola'.

Instead of sitting inside on the objective, defenders sprint out a door to catch attackers in the open before they've set up. Pure aggression. Catches a flank, eats clock, then ideally you retreat back to site.

run it up the flagpole

To propose something to others to gauge whether it gains support.

To play another game immediately, often with the same teams, especially in pickup basketball.

Move food from kitchen window to guest. The whole role of a food runner is built on this verb. Plates are hot, time is short, and the window doesn't care whose section it is — when expo calls 'run it', whoever's nearest goes.

A modest local drinking establishment, hub of village liming and gossip. Also rum shop.

Old ICU bedside rule, half joke half observation. Count the tubes — ET tube, NG, catheter, drains, central lines — once you're past five orifices plumbed in, the patient's odds of leaving the unit alive drop off a cliff. Not in any textbook, but every intensivist who's done a few years nods at it.

An internet adage stating that for any given character there exists an opposite-gender counterpart; widely used to label gender-swapped cosplay and fan art.

A very real risk in speculative crypto, not just a meme.

Got rinsed by the project's own team. They drained the liquidity pool, deleted the Discord, nuked the site, and vanished — your bag is now worth zero and there's no one to sue. The default exit scam of crypto.

A fraud in which a project's creators build hype, attract buyers, then pull the liquidity (or dump their allocation) and disappear, crashing the token to zero. Often shortened to 'rug' or used as a verb, 'to get rugged'.

Spanglish loanword for the roof of a house; a roofer is a 'rufero.'

By extension, a bullying, swaggering rogue — one who rs alms by intimidation on the open road.

Originally a rebellious, streetwise Jamaican youth of the 1960s ska era; can mean a tough guy or criminal, or be used affectionately.