It’s all skibidi to me…

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

Are you familiar with the phrase “no cap”? Do you know what it means? It means that a persson is not wearing a cap, you say? Sure, that’s what it means. Or maybe you have a pen but you lost the cap, so you can’t carry it around in your pocket without leaving one of those blue inky blotches I used to get all the time during my days as a beat reporter and would ruin another pair of khaki pants by leaving my pen in the wash.

Or maybe it means there’s no limit. “No cap on commissions for the sales force this month!” Makes sense. But what if I told you it meant that someone was telling the truthc? Would that make sense? You know: Bob: “I kissed Debbie?”

Fred: “You did? for real?”

Bob: “No cap!”

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From page A4

Yeah, I don’t get it either, but as always, our language is evolving and words change meaning and new phrases emerge and I can feel myself getting older just thinking about it.

As a parent of a 29-year-old, a 27 year-old and an 18-yearold, I’ve been exposed to the language of the next generation for the past quarter-century and so I’ve heard phrases like “acting boujee” and “spill the tea” in my vocabulary.

The first meaning “being fancy” or extravagant, which is actually kind of funny because it isn’t just some made up word. It comes from the French term “bourgeois,” a term for the upper-middleclass in the 18th century.

If you’re spilling the tea, it’s a little easier to see where that comes from. It’s like you’re giving up the juicy details of some kind of real-life drama.

Sometimes you’ll just hear someone say something like, “So, what’s the tea on Bill and Jessica?” With the other person then having to decide on whether or not to “spill” said tea.

Yes, it can be a challenge. But let’s not pretend that this is anything new. If I tell you something is “cool,” you know I’m not talking about the temperature. And if I tell you a woman is “hot,” well you also know it’s not about her having a fever. I guess the “cool” kids use “fire” now to mean “hot,” which sort of makes sense as a natural evolution, althoug I’ve been told that the next generation might have moved on to something being “bussin’” these days or that their outfit “slaps” or maybe even “extra” if it’s something especially extravagant. Can you “dig” it? No, I don’t mean like in the dirt…

I don’t know that we need to fight about it, but if you want, then you can “catch these hands.” I kind of like that one because it refers back to the old-timey phrase “throwing hands” to mean boxing or fistfighting… no cap.

The other day my daughter and her friend were sitting with us at the dinner table talking about some high school band drama when one of them says, “Well, she needs to take several seats.”

The other said, “Yeah, she’s just being….” Something.

Yeah, I was at a lost. So I had to ask. First, “take several seats” is a great phrase, but the word I did not understand was “choogy”… at least that’s what I heard. I decided to Google it and it took a while but I eventually found “cheugy,” which means, like, basic, or the opposite of “extra” but also somehow neither of those is good…

The latest I’ve come across is “skibidi” — not even really sure how to prononce it honestly. It’s a word the youngsters have picked up from somewhere — probably the internet, which tells me it’s a nonsense word just used to fill in the blank about, well, anything. Good luck raising those kids, right? Well, iykyk!

Which, I’m told means, “If you know, you know.”