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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Latest slang terms

The length of time a player appears to hang in the air after leaping, especially on dunks or layups.

A classic noseriding move where the surfer walks to the front of a longboard and hangs all ten toes over the nose.

A Hawaiian expression meaning to relax, chill and stay laid-back and positive, often paired with the shaka hand sign.

Noseriding with the toes of one foot draped over the nose of a longboard.

Yelled by the expo when plates are stacking up under the heat lamps and nobody's grabbing them. Doesn't matter whose section — the rule is whoever hears 'hands' drops what they're doing and grabs a plate. Food sitting in the window is the cardinal sin.

The metal rail alongside a set of stairs, used by street skaters to grind and slide down; a benchmark of gnarly street skating.

The gloves or mitts of a fursuit that turn the wearer's hands into animal paws; part of both partial and full suits.

handle the jandal

A playful Kiwi phrase meaning to be able to handle a situation. 'Can you handle the jandal?' asks if you can cope.

The chosen nickname a CB user goes by on the air. Picked for color, personality, or your truck — almost never your legal name. Half the fun of CB culture is the handle.

When players square up and shove each other in a heated but harmless flare-up that comes to nothing.

A jocular pseudo-diagnosis extending the 'handbag positive' sign into fake disease form.

handbag positive

Ward shorthand on the geriatric and acute medical floors: the disoriented elderly female patient who refuses to let go of her handbag, even in bed, even asleep. It's actually a fairly reliable bedside clue to underlying cognitive impairment — they don't know where they are, but they know that bag is theirs.

A handgun. "Ting" is Jamaican-rooted Caribbean-British slang for thing — so hand ting is literally a hand-thing, a pistol you can conceal in one fist. UK drill out of London birthed it; NYC drill picked it up via the Brooklyn-to-Brixton pipeline.

hand performance

One of the five fundamental elements of Vogue Femme (alongside catwalk, duckwalk, floor performance, and dips and spins). Hand performance is storytelling with the hands and arms — angular, geometric, sometimes spinning movements that frame the face, paint pictures and narrate without a word. Where arms control is judged on precision, hand performance is judged on what you say with it.

Refers to a goal punched in with the hand and wrongly allowed, immortalised by Maradona against England in 1986.

A made-up illness, originating in shoujo manga, in which a person suffering from one-sided love coughs up flower petals; it is only cured when the love is returned or through surgery that removes the feelings.

Teeth — the everyday clip of 'Hampstead Heath'.

hampstead heath

The teeth. 'Hampstead Heath' rhymes with 'teeth', and the phrase is shortened to 'Hampsteads', dropping the rhyme.

Affectionate slang for the hamstrings, the muscles on the back of the upper legs.

The leftmost lane on a US interstate — the one you use to overtake and to run at speed. Called the hammer lane because that's where you've got the hammer down. Truckers use it as both a literal direction ('moving to the hammer lane') and as shorthand for a hard-charging life on the road. Major trucker magazine even took the name.

Putting the hammer down means stomping the accelerator and running flat out. The 'hammer' is the gas pedal. Used as both an instruction ('hammer down, we got daylight all the way to Toledo') and as a sign-off wishing the other driver a fast clean run. The CB shorthand for 'go, go, go.'

A particularly gnarly, high-impact trick, often down large gaps or rails; 'throwing hammers' means landing big, heavy tricks.

Slang for a $10 note, after Alexander Hamilton's portrait.

A mess or botch. To 'make a hames of' something is to do it very badly or ineptly.