Teacher creates 'Gen Z Dictionary' to help him learn slang words his students use

The document defines terms like 'I'm dead', 'low key' and 'spill the tea'

Sarah Jones
Wednesday 01 May 2019 12:20 BST
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(Getty Images)

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A document created by a teacher to help him learn slang words has gone viral.

On Tuesday, a Twitter user who goes by the handle @mewtailv2 shared a series of photographs of a document titled “Generation Z Dictionary”.

In the caption, @mewtailv2 explained that the document was created by a teacher, writing: “My sociology professor keeps an alphabetic list of new slang terms he learns from students and I will never get over it.”

The trio of images show a Google Doc with a list of slang terms like “I'm dead”, “low key” and “spill the tea” alongside definitions of each one.

The teacher described the term “pull up/come through” to mean “an invitation”, while “rashing” was defined as “to make fun of someone”.

Other definitions include “hip/get hip” meaning “adopt a new tend” and “jams” meaning “an old enjoyable song”.

Since sharing images on Twitter, the post has received more than 42,000 retweets and 139,000 likes.

It has also garnered hundreds of comments from people praising the teacher for making an effort to understand more about his students.

“This is actually pretty cool of him and kinda sweet too [sic],” one person wrote.

Another added: “I've never seen someone do this and it actually be accurate.”

Others said they empathised with the teacher, revealing that his list actually helped them learn the definition of some slang terms.

“I'm officially out of touch with the youth of today,” one person commented.

Another wrote: “How embarrassing is it that I only know a couple of these?”

A third person added: “I need the translations I don’t understand nobody nowadays.”

Following the significant amount of attention the document received online, @mewtailv2 said they would show the teacher the tweet and share a link to the document so people can view it in its entirety.

In 2018, a number of new words were added to the Oxford English Dictionary, including “mansplaining” and “hangry”.

“Mansplaining” refers to the action of a man explaining something to a woman in a condescending way, while “hangry” is the feeling of being both starving hungry and increasingly angry at the same time.

In April 2019, the Merriam Webster dictionary also added 640 new additions including “buzzy”, “on-brand”, “swole” and “stan".

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