Slang Dictionary — Modern Slang, Decoded

The volatile aromatic compounds in cannabis responsible for its distinct scents and flavors, often abbreviated 'terps'.

A style of quartz banger with a bottom dish and open slotted channels that pull melted concentrate upward as it vaporizes, maximizing flavor.

A concentrate consisting largely of terpenes in a runny, sauce-like form, often paired with THCA diamonds, prized for intense flavor.

Tiny quartz, glass or ruby balls placed inside a banger that spin with airflow, distributing heat evenly and spreading the concentrate for a bigger, more even vaporization. Also called dab pearls.

Slang clip of 'terpene,' referring to the aromatic flavor compounds of a strain.

Clipped slang for a first-year resident (intern), the most junior doctor.

A brevity code, used in training, directing participants to cease a local engagement without affecting the overall exercise — narrower in scope than 'Knock it off'.

Stronger sibling of 'chronically online'. Implies the condition is fatal — the person can no longer think a thought that isn't refracted through a niche subreddit or a 4-year-old Tumblr argument. Their references won't land at a dinner table. They will, however, type 1,200 words about why your dinner-table take is fascist.

A US Marine stuck at E-3 Lance Corporal for their entire enlistment — passed over for promotion to Corporal again and again, and now headed for EAS (End of Active Service) with the same rank they pinned on years ago. The phrase mixes self-deprecation, dark humour, and a particular brand of resignation that only Marines really understand. Cemented in Corps culture by Maximilian Uriarte's long-running comic strip 'Terminal Lance', launched in 2010, which basically became the unofficial newspaper of the lower enlisted.

To drape sheets or blankets around a bed to create a private, curtained space, often against the rules.

The dream call at a ball: every judge throws up a 10, you sweep the panel and move forward, no chops. It's the ballroom version of a flawless victory, and the phrase has spread well beyond the scene as shorthand for perfection — used the way you'd say something scored a perfect 10. So iconic it's been borrowed as the title of essays and pieces on ballroom history itself.

Straight tens across the board, a perfect score from all the judges, which sends a walker through to the next round. 'Getting your 10s' is the goal of the opening round of a category: clear the bar, prove you've got the fundamentals and the look, and you advance. Anything less and you risk the chop.

Slang for a ten-unit banknote in the US and UK.

Money won on a trade, framed like a mum-bought reward of chicken tenders for being a good boy. Born on r/wallstreetbets where the self-deprecating image is a basement-dwelling man-child cashing out his Robinhood account to order tendies. Profits = tendies. Losses = no tendies tonight.

Playful title for a trader who has racked up serious profits ('tendies'), a hero of the day on WSB.

A fire apparatus built around a large water tank (typically 1,000–4,000 gallons) used to shuttle water to fires where no hydrants exist — rural structure fires, wildland incidents, highway calls. NWCG and NFPA officially call them "water tenders"; many East Coast departments still call the same rig a "tanker," which in wildland-speak actually means an air tanker. The terminology fight is eternal.

Doing something on foot, no car, no help. Drill rappers go 'ten toes' to a rival block — walking in, not driving by. Counts ten toes because that's what you're rolling with.

The prescribed speed of a rep, often written as four numbers for the lowering, pause, lifting and top phases.

Told. Geordie and Scots past tense of 'tell' — preserves the older English pattern (like 'felt' from 'feel'). Standard English ironed it out to 'told'; the North kept the original.

A challenge format where you out yourself as belonging to some group by listing oddly specific habits or quirks instead of stating it directly. The further the indirection, the funnier the reveal.

An instruction to take your time, be careful or go gently with something.

A marker of self-aware, old-internet humor, signalling the writer is being playful.

Mock acronym written into notes as a plan when a patient has been worked up to death, treated with everything, and nothing has shifted. Stands for 'Tried Everything Else, Try Homeopathy' — a swipe at both the impossible case and at homeopathy as a last-resort placebo. Pure dark-humour catharsis; never actually meant as a treatment plan.

To pour, especially heavy rain; to empty out a liquid.