FROM BABY BOOMERS TO GEN-Z

Don't be a square! 10 slang words from then to now

Image: Johnny Cohen

When a person born in the 1960s talks to someone born after the millennium, two distinct linguistic universes collide. That doesn’t mean they can’t understand each other, though–and despite (sometimes) vastly different perceptions about the world, both may have more in common than they happen to realize.

Slang are words or expressions used informally by people of a certain group that tend to be associated with a particular identity or experiences, and that often reinforce cultural ties within a generation or identity group. For anyone out of the loop, most slang is indecipherable, as all parents of teenagers or foreign English learners soon discover.

But many slang words and expressions go back to the same ideas, fulfilling the necessity to show approval or dislike of certain things that make up the life experiences of their users. Language is amazingly flexible, but how we talk—and what we talk about—always comes down to our main experiences and things that we can relate to on an everyday basis.

If you don’t believe us, join us to learn the meanings behind the sometimes cryptic language of Gen-Z and the equally baffling expressions from the Baby Boomer generation.

Image: Skye Studios

Something that is very good, exciting, or enjoyable. Do you like what you see? Just say ‘Lit’. If you haven’t heard this expression, you must have been living under a rock. ‘Lit’ is used everywhere, even by savvy millennials who don’t want to be left out yet.

Image: Emmy Smith

Someone is salty when they are angry or upset about something minor. A favorite of gamer teenagers. When you lose a game, you are probably gonna be salty about it. For older folks, think ‘ticked off’.

Image: Tandem X Visuals

‘Ghosting’ is the practice of cutting communication, usually over social media, with someone you are no longer interested in. While the act of vanishing is as old as the hills, the act of ghosting has an implicit connotation of happening through social media chats. Gen-Z is—for some reason—terrified of using phones as… well, phones, and would never directly call each other.

Image: Nijwam Swargiary

Something extremely cool. So, when a Gen-Z says, ‘Her fit at the party was fire’, you can translate it as ‘Her threads at the party were groovy’. Get it now?

Disclaimer: Intermediate generations between Baby Boomers and Gen-Z might be a bit confused now.

Image: Ben White

To ‘flex’ is just another way of saying that someone is showing off. Ok, this one probably resonates more with younger Millennials, but has its place in the Gen-Z vocabulary. The word originated with the slang phrase ‘weird flex but OK’, meant as a mocking answer to someone bragging about something unusual or questionable.

Image: Nick Karvounis

Cool. Come on, anyone who has ever seen Austin Powers or any movie about the sixties and seventies knows this one. You can still say ‘groovy, baby!’ and everyone will get it, but people may laugh. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Image: Brian Lundquist

Having fun, or in reference to something that it’s fun or good. Nothing to do with gasoline, but some people speculate there might be some relation to the effects of nitrous oxide intoxication - also known as laughing gas.

In any case, the first record of usage of the word ‘gas’ with a similar meaning is in 1839 under the pen of Charles Dickens. He wrote ‘Everything is gas and goiters’.

Image: Hardini Lestari

Someone uncool or unfashionable. As is often the case with a lot of slang words used by the Baby Boomer generation, the word ‘square’ originated in the American jazz scene of the 1940s, meaning musically outdated people.

Image: Sepp Rutz

Boring. When something or someone is a drag, they are boring. Not to be confused with the Drag culture, where performers—typically men—dress as women in an exaggerated style.

Image: Simon

Making a phone call. Although it has various interpretations that vary with context, ‘to drop a dime’ usually means simply to call someone on the phone. The phrase comes from the time when the cost of using a pay phone was 10 cents or a dime. You drop a dime and make a phone call, just so the other person doesn’t think you are ‘ghosting’ them!

It can also mean to inform on or betray someone, usually by telling a person in authority about their wrongdoings or unlawful activities.

Image: Glenn Carstens-Peters

We hope by now you are way more fluent in the slang used by young people both today and yesterday. The fun thing about language is that—more often than not—words that appear as slang end up becoming part of ‘normal’ speech or even formal communication. So nothing is really forgotten, and we think that’s groovy.

If you enjoyed our little list and want to keep learning about weird words, the origin of popular sayings, or just about anything relating to language, don’t miss out on our other articles! We’ll keep uploading and exploring interesting topics just for you.

Translation and interpretation

Was the forbidden fruit really an apple? 10 Bible surprises

What if some of the Bible stories you grew up with aren't exactly what the Bible says? Was the forbidden fruit really an apple? Were there actually three Wise Men? Did "God helps those who help themselves" really come from the Bible? Over centuries, translations, traditions, and famous works of art have added details that became so familiar, we stopped questioning them. But go back to the texts, and some of these stories look surprisingly different. From Eve's "apple" to the date of Jesus' birth, here are 10 familiar parts of the Bible that may not be quite what we remember.

When you picture the Garden of Eden, what fruit comes to mind? Most people imagine an apple, but there's just one problem: the Bible never says it was an apple.

In the Book of Genesis, the fruit is simply called "the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." The original Hebrew text uses the word peri, which simply means "fruit." The apple connection came centuries later, largely through the Latin translation. The Latin word malum can mean both "apple" and "evil," making it an especially fitting symbol for the story. Over time, that association spread through Christian art and literature. Famous works such as Albrecht Dürer’s 1504 engraving Adam and Eve (also known as The Fall of Man) helped cement the image of Eve holding an apple. Today, it's one of the most famous scenes in history, even though the original biblical text doesn’t identify the fruit as an apple at all.

The story of Jesus' birth is so famous that most of us picture the Three Wise Men, sometimes called the Three Kings, standing beside the manger. But the thing is, over the centuries, the story picked up a few details that aren't actually in the Bible.

In the Gospel of Matthew, the only Gospel that mentions these visitors, they are described simply as Magi from the East. The original Greek word, magoi, referred to learned scholars, astrologers, or priests from Persia or Babylon, not kings. But where did the number three come from? Matthew lists three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but never says how many visitors brought them. Over the centuries, people naturally assumed there must have been three Magi, one for each gift. Even their familiar names, Melchior, Caspar, and Balthasar, were added later by Christian tradition. So, neither the number of visitors nor their names appears anywhere in the biblical text.

Whether it's used to motivate a friend, encourage a family member, or push yourself to finally make a difficult decision, "God helps those who help themselves" is one of the most familiar religious sayings in America. But here's the surprise: those words never appear in the Bible.

The idea can be traced to ancient Greek sources, including Aesop’s Fables, where the saying appears in an earlier form: "The gods help them that help themselves." The exact modern wording was written by English politician Algernon Sidney in 1698, but it was Benjamin Franklin who helped make it part of American culture when he included it in his 1736 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack.

Many teenagers have heard "Cleanliness is next to godliness" when it was time to clean their rooms. But despite sounding like a Bible verse, the phrase never appears in Scripture.

The Bible, particularly Leviticus, does contain extensive laws requiring people to wash their bodies and clothes in certain circumstances, especially before religious rituals. But the famous saying itself came much later. In 1605, Francis Bacon wrote in The Advancement of Learning that "cleanness of body" was connected to reverence for God. Then, in 1786, it was Methodist leader John Wesley who used the wording we recognize today in a sermon: "Cleanliness is indeed next to Godliness." Over time, the phrase became a familiar saying that many people simply assumed came from the Bible.

When it comes to famous dates, December 25 may be the most recognizable of all, universally associated with Christmas. But here's the surprising part: the Bible never gives any specific date for Jesus' birth.

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke describe the Nativity but never provide a calendar date, so how did December 25 become Christmas? There are two leading theories. The first is that the Roman Church was celebrating Christmas on December 25 by 336 AD, during Constantine's reign, possibly choosing the date to coincide with existing Roman winter festivals and make it easier to convert the empire to Christianity. The second points to an early Christian tradition that calculated Jesus' birth date from the supposed date of his crucifixion, eventually arriving at December 25.

The story of Jonah and the Whale is so famous that it has appeared literally or symbolically in innumerable works of art and literature, from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508-1512) to Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. But there's a small problem with the title we've given it: the Bible doesn’t actually say it was a whale.

In the Old Testament, the original Hebrew text of Jonah 1:17 uses the words dag gadol, meaning "great fish" or "large fish"; it doesn't identify the creature as a whale, or even specify what kind of fish it was. Most modern English translations therefore stick with "great fish," but the familiar "whale" interpretation developed through older translations and later European tradition, eventually becoming so widespread that "Jonah and the Whale" became the name almost everyone recognizes.

Just as we've always pictured the forbidden fruit as an apple, many of us also assume the serpent in the Garden of Eden is the devil himself. But the original story is a little more complicated.

A plain reading of Genesis depicts the creature simply as a serpent or snake, using the Hebrew word nachash. It describes the serpent as clever and crafty, but it never calls it Satan or explicitly identifies it as the devil. So where did the connection come from? The answer comes from later parts of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. In Revelation 12:9 and 20:2, Satan is called "the ancient serpent" (ho ophis ho archaios in Greek), connecting him to the snake of Eden. Over time, Christian tradition applied that later connection back to Genesis, leading to the familiar belief that the serpent was Satan himself.

Many of us remember Samson for his legendary strength and the long hair that was said to be the source of his power. His story with Delilah is one of the Bible's most famous tales of betrayal, but there's one detail some people may have gotten wrong: Delilah didn't actually cut his long hair.

In Judges 16:19, Delilah has Samson's hair shaved while he sleeps on her lap. The text says she called for a man to do the shaving; it never says she did it herself. Yet paintings, films, and other retellings have often shown Delilah wielding the scissors herself, cementing that image in popular culture. It can be considered a small detail, but it’s a great example of how easily familiar Bible stories can pick up elements that aren't actually in the original text.

Many of us think of the Bible as a single book, written at one particular time by one author, or perhaps a handful of them. After all, that's how it looks when you pick one up in a hotel room, but its history is far more complicated.

The Bible is actually a collection of books written by over 40 authors over roughly 1,500 years, from about 1400 BC to AD 100. The exact number of books varies by religious tradition: Protestant Bibles contain 66 books, while Catholic and Orthodox traditions include additional books. Across these different traditions, the writings were produced by kings, prophets, fishermen, and scholars in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. They also span a tremendous range of literary styles, including history, poetry, songs, laws, letters, and prophecy. So while we hold it as one book today, the Bible is actually a collection of many different writings produced across centuries.

Many people assume that at least a few original fragments of the Bible must still exist somewhere. It would be incredible if they did, but none of the original manuscripts, known as autographs, have survived.

The earliest biblical texts were written on fragile materials such as papyrus and animal skins, which could deteriorate through humidity, heat, handling, and simple age. Wars, fires, and other destruction also contributed to their disappearance. So how do we know what the originals said? Through a technique called textual criticism: expert scholars compare thousands of handwritten copies, ancient translations, and quotations from early Christian writers. When they find passages that match across different sources, or differences that reveal how a text changed over time, they can work backward to determine what the original most likely said, even though the original manuscripts themselves are gone.