Slang Dictionary — Modern Slang, Decoded

Note: a separate, unrelated meaning is to mock or sneer at something.

Dirty, grimy or gross. Also spelled 'scody' or 'scoady'.

A NOLA unit of rough volume — about three cubic feet, or 'whatever fit in one of those huge Schwegmann's grocery sacks.' Used for everything from crawfish to laundry. Pure local shorthand; nobody outside the city has any idea what you mean.

Cheap, poor-quality cannabis, often dry, brown, and full of stems and seeds.

Silent or quiet; 'keep schtum' means to say nothing, especially to the authorities.

A glass of beer of a particular size (about 425ml in most states), larger than a middy.

A deli-counter instruction to apply cream cheese to a bagel.

The thick layer of cream cheese applied to a bagel; to order 'with a schmear' is quintessentially New York. Also used as a verb.

To lug something burdensome, or to travel a tiresome distance. A 'schlep' can also be the tedious journey itself.

A posting style that mimics a manic episode — wall-of-text rants, random caps, conspiracy logic, jumbled images, surreal connections. The point is the vibe, not the content; reading it should feel like watching someone lose the plot in real time. Common on Discord, 4chan and Twitter. The term has drawn criticism for casually using a serious illness as a punchline.

A local-authority housing estate; a 'schemie' is a (often derogatory) resident of one.

In kink, a scene is one contained BDSM encounter: the setup, the play itself, and the wind-down, all treated as a single negotiated unit. It has a beginning and an end, agreed roles, and limits hashed out beforehand. Think of it less like 'having sex' and more like a performance with a script everyone signed off on — what's on the table, what's off, who's in charge. When people say a scene is 'over,' they mean the play part stops and aftercare begins.

Very dirty, scruffy or messy. In Scouse this is the dominant sense — used for grim flats, knackered trainers, or someone who looks like they've slept in a bin. Note: the standard British 'scatty' meaning scatterbrained exists too but isn't what Liverpool means by it.

A smaller, elusive, fast running back used more for speed and receiving than power.

A command telling a person or animal to leave, get out, or move off.

To run away or escape quickly. The origin is debated: it may come from Italian 'scappare' (to escape) via Polari/Parlyaree, or from Cockney rhyming slang 'Scapa Flow' = go.

Mortified beyond saving. Not mildly embarrassed — full beetroot, want-the-ground-to-swallow-you embarrassed. Usually said about yourself or, more savagely, at someone else as a roast.

A tertiary student, particularly at the University of Otago in Dunedin, named for the scarves worn against the southern cold.

A fan translator, or team of them, who scans, translates, typesets and cleans manga pages to share with non-Japanese readers.

The fan process — and its result — of scanning manga, translating the text, and editing it back into the pages so non-Japanese readers can follow along. Legally grey but historically vital to manga's spread.

A wave of Southern rap built around bragging about fraud — credit-card cloning, identity theft, wire scams, PPP loans. Teejayx6 out of Detroit is the poster boy, but the lineage runs through Migos' jugg talk and Plies' 'Ran Off On Da Plug Twice' era. Half tutorial, half flex.

A style of trading involving very quick entries and exits to capture small price movements repeatedly throughout the day.

Short for scallywag. A young rogue — tracksuit, trainers, up to no good but charming with it. Born in Liverpool in the 80s, spread across the north. Half insult, half affection depending on who's saying it.

A measure of how strong a champion becomes over time. A 'scaling' champ is weak early but monstrous once they hit their item spikes and levels, so they play for the long game.