Even old people will just stop using them, like “groovy”.
this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025
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"Rizz", "cooking" and "based" are going to be stereotypical old people words one day
(sh.itjust.works)
Dude, that's totes bogus. Get outta here with that whackness. /s
Can't speak for anywhere but where I've lived, but I've heard groovy on the US west coast pretty recently, though not regularly. There was a niche little clique of geeks out in east Texas that'd say it pretty regularly some years ago though. Hippie activist/tabletop enthusiast type vibe, that group. Good people. Groovy, even.
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Yo dawg, that would be like totally tubular unless the geezers spaz out like lamo rents gettin all agro after gettin to tha crib and finding all da homies having a jammy jam in the hizzie. Ya feel me, cuz?
Word up, homie.
What does lamo mean? I understood the rest, and yes, my back hurts.
Misspelled "lame-o" is my guess. Though my spelling of it is a guess as well.
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I'm 40 and I understand most of that, yup it's old person speak.
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"cooking" in the context of doing something well has been around for a long time. Think, "now you're cooking!" Or the less common "now you're cooking with gas!"
I think it's just in more frequent use currently. It will be interesting to see if people stop using it after it goes out of fashion with the youth.
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Nurse! I vibe coded in my pants again
Gyatt so Ohio, on god.
One of these days I need to go and read through the Calvin and Hobbes collection I bought for my bookshelf when it was on a steep discount. I remember reading them all the time as a kid.
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Cooking is not new slang. That shit goes back decades.
Yup
Phrase what's cooking? "what's up, what's going on" is attested by 1942. To cook with gas "do well, act or think correctly" is 1930s jive talk.
The expression "NOW YOU'RE COOKING WITH GAS" has bobbed up again — this time as a front page streamer on the Roper Ranger, and as the banner line in the current advertising series of the Nashville (Tenn.) Gas and Heating Company, cleverly tying gas cooking to local food products and restaurants. "Now you're cooking with gas" literally took the gas industry by the ears around December 1939 — Remember? — when it flashed forth in brilliant repartee from the radio programs of the Maxwell Coffee Hour, Jack Benny, Chase and Sanborn, Johnson Wax, Bob Hope and sundry others. [American Gas Association Monthly, vol. xxiii, 1941
As an old person today, I have no clue what these words mean. Assuming cooking has nothing to do with food. I've never heard rizz. I've at least heard people use based, though I don't know its use.
Rizz = Charisma
Based = Cool; Awesome; Good.
Cooked = Fucked (as in up, not sexually).
Cooking = Doing something (usually good, but does not necessarily have to be).
Sincerely,
A 40 year old Millennial.
'cooking' specifically implies either creativity or efficacy (or both, some novel solution that results in success)
Ah but then there is the phrase "let him cook," which tends to be used when someone starts doing something that seems foolish. I would think it at least somewhat relates to "cooking." If you fail, you are "cooked."
Edit: To clarify, this phrase is commonly seen after someone says something like "hey, don't do that;" I did not mean to imply the phrase itself has an inherent good/bad connotation, merely what has been pointed out that they want to "wait and see" the results before making judgement.
This version of cook seems aligned with "hold on."
As in "it's not yet apparent that what's happening makes sense/is good."
Where's that tiktok linguist kid when ya need him.
Cooking - you are doing something good
Cooked, getting cooked - someone is messing around with you and you fall for it, kinda like this maybe could be better explanation.
"You are cooking" - you made a song, for example, and it was great song.
"You are cooked" - kinda like when you, as a child, do something bad and your parents are going to be mad when they find out — you are basically cooked.
I'd say "let him cook" is foolishness-agnostic. It could be good or bad, but it's definitely unexpected
"Let him cook" is more like "I wanna see where this is going"
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Based also sorta meant woke for a bit before woke
And then it swung the other way and meant being racist pos for a wide minute, too
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I consider 'based' an opposite of 'sour' or 'acidic'. That is, being alkaline and having high pH is considered socially desirable. Mixing based and sour personalities will naturally produce salt, that is, dried tears.
Cooking is a term for any time-consuming chemical reaction, which happens to include food preparation.
I have no chemistry-related explanation for rizz. Something to do with sparks?
Yep me too, I bet as it's young people it's mainly texted and in txt spk
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in the nursing home talking about how I rizzed up the nurses (i didn't)
Based has been around forever, it's not some new slang.
forever
Maybe like 10 years? That seem about right?
Some searching seems to suggest that “Lil B” started the words come back around 2010
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they already are in black communities, teens see tiktok comments and go wow new slang, a lot of this shit isnt new tho, like bop wasnt new but everyone acted like it was a new tiktok word, neither was thot on twitter or many others, rizz isnt new, its been around, cooking and based? not new at all
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My 34 year-old brother says "rats!" when something bad happens. He learned from our grandpa.
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They already are, as people on here know them. Also “cooking” just seems to be shorthand for “cooking with gas”, with the same connotations and meaning, and boomers are definitely saying that.
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Gag me with a spoon
I was today years old when I relaised that "gag" in that phrase presumably means "make me vomit" not "silence me". I've spent many decades being confused about that...
I haven't heard swag in a long while and so I'm not sure how many of these words will actually be used enough later on.
I'll be ambling through nursing home hallways in a threadbare robe on the way to the ol' skibidi while some orderlies with multicolor levitating hair make modem noises at each other.
That'll just be the microplastic poisoning setting in though.
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Not really. Just look up the some slang words from 2000's you've never heard of but what everyone in my generation would've been constantly using.
Ofc some of them are still around, but most aren't.
Chillax n00b, cuz 2000's slang is awesomesauce, biatch!
idkmybffjill
And their grandkids will ask "based on what?"
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