Gen Z TikTok core
Rizz, slay, no cap, mid. The vocabulary that escapes a phone screen and somehow ends up at the dinner table.
The very online dictionary
Brainrot, doomscrolling, touch grass. Words for people who spend a little too much of their life inside a feed.
Gamer speak
GG, noob, rage quit, final boss. The lobby vocabulary that leaked out of the headset and into real life.
Aesthetics and cores
Dark academia, quiet luxury, gorpcore. Every look on the internet gets a name, and here they all are.
Proper British
Knackered, gobsmacked, having a kip. The everyday English of the chippie, the bus stop and the long way home from the pub.
On the lash
Plastered, bladdered, legless. Every British word for a drink too many, from last orders to the hangxiety.
Aussie barbecue
Arvo, brekkie, fair dinkum. The Australian way of shrinking every word, every name and every sentence by half.
Kiwi English, sweet as
Chur, choice, jandals. New Zealand's small dictionary of saying yes, thanks and all good with as few syllables as possible.
Ey up, the North of England
Nowt, owt, mardy, our kid. From Scouse to Geordie, the words that make the North sound like the North.
Cockney and old London
Have a butcher's, porkies, Bob's your uncle. Rhyming slang, geezers and the coppers who chased them.
London road slang
Wagwan, mandem, allow it. The words of the ends, from Jamaican roots to the back of the bus.
Irie, Jamaican Patois
Wah gwaan, nyam, likkle. The Jamaican words that travelled to London and never went home.
Cwtch and tidy, Wales and the West
Cwtch, tidy, dreckly, proper job. The words from the western edge of Britain that sound like a hug.
Scottish for foreigners
Wee, braw, bairn, gallus. The Scottish words that make every walk feel like a poem, even on a Tuesday in February.
The Irish craic
Grand, gas, eejit, sound. Ireland's small dictionary of warmth, mischief and the gentle art of saying everything is fine when it isn't.
NYC street talk
Deadass, mad, bodega, jawn. The cadence of every train station, deli counter and stoop in the five boroughs.
California, dude
Hella, stoked, gnarly, rad. Surf, skate and sun: the West Coast words that made chill a lifestyle.
Southern charm
Bless your heart, fixin' to, y'all. The Southern way of being polite that can also be the most brutal sentence you hear all week.
Canadian, eh
Toque, loonie, double-double. The English of Tim Hortons queues and very long winters.
English from Lagos to Singapore
Abeg, lah, jugaad, do the needful. Nigerian Pidgin, Singlish and Indian English, the Englishes that grew their own grammar.
Lekker South African English
Howzit, braai, eish, just now. South Africa's English, where now means later and lekker means everything good.
Dating apps decoded
Situationship, breadcrumbing, soft launch. The new vocabulary that arrived with swiping and never quite let go of us.
Pulling, snogging and the fit bird
On the pull, snog, loved up. The very British way of fancying someone without ever saying so.
Surviving student life
Swot, bunk off, in the bag. What gets said in lectures, in the library at three in the morning and on the way out of an exam.
Skint, minted and quids in
Dosh, quid, fiver, broke. All the English for money, from having none to having far too much.
Knackered, shattered and zonked
Every English word for being tired, ill or gloriously horizontal, from a quick kip to a full bed rot.
Muppets, plonkers and numpties
The gentle British art of calling someone an idiot without quite meaning it.
A bestiary of English idioms
Dark horses, red herrings and cats out of bags. Every animal the English language keeps for its own purposes.
Nosh, the English of food
Grub, scran, butty, cuppa. What the English eat, how they talk about it and every idiom that ended up in the pan.
Jolly good, posh and old-fashioned
Tickety-boo, codswallop, kerfuffle. The English your grandmother's grandmother would recognise, still going strong.
Cheesed off and fed up in British
Gutted, miffed, narky, do your nut. The full scale of British irritation, from a quiet sulk to going spare.