Here are some words and phrases which have recently come into 'yoof' ( old person's slang for 'youth') slang here. They appear in a dictionary of teen slang compiled, and recently published, by a 13 year old girl. She's a pupil at Cheltenham Ladies' College, long regarded as the stuffiest of all the top boarding schools for girls, so Heaven alone knows what they are learning and using at other establishments!Have a guess at the meaning:

a) 'It's a major cringe' !
b) An 'Elton' (you'd find one of these in the house)
c) The 'rents' and a 'Klingon' ( these are people found in families)
d) It's really 'book'!
e)'It's phat !' and 'It's phat free!'
f) [Of something such as an event or party, or of someone] 'It/ he's vanilla'

Reportedly you can work out the meaning of d)'book' if you are familiar with a device that every youngster has, but I must admit that I didn't get it even when it was explained !

'rents' is short for 'parents.' We know that here, although I couldn't imagine many using it regularly here.

If someone is phat and not fat, they are hot, cool or sexy!
That is a good thing.

An Elton is someone who is gay.

Surely An "Elton" is the John.

Phat is indeed 'hot'. It is, oddly,a corruption of 'fat' [Black slang] according to Collins Dictionary

An 'Elton' is a lavatory,that being a 'john' in American: it's the 'Elton John' .

'Rents' are 'the mouldies', the parents. They may be parents to a klingon

Any book on teen speak is as ephemeral as the the latest copy of a magazine published for that age group.
Kudos to Lucy, the little rich girl ( fees at her school are upwards of $50,000 a year), who probably used Mummy and Daddy's contacts to line her pockets further, at the cost of all those dumb plebs out there.
We are talking about slang that changes as quickly as the latest fashions here.
Sorry, I don't go for the idea that she was encouraged her to write the book to help other parents break the code.
More like, "Here's some big bucks to be made. Let me call a publisher, darling."
After all, once we all understand the language, the words are no longer a secret, and it's time to change them.

Well, dg, the publisher is a small publisher and the payment was £1000 ($2000) so she hasn't made much so far, has she ? And there's little prospect of much more.Believe me, very, very few books make any money at all and this is no obvious exception

Whatever you snidely say about 'little rich girl' the parents can't be in need of the money, can they ?Nor, presumably, can their girl. Fees are £8176 per term at Cheltenham Ladies College. For comparison, my girl's first boarding school, Roedean, is now up to £8650, and her second one St Mary's Calne is now £8350 per term.If only I'd thought of a book on slang: we could have done with £1000 ! We could have spared her the paper round and going down the mine with that ruddy canary in the holidays.It cost a fortune in birdseed. Thank goodness she is now in college!

And what do you think the answers to the others are?

Oh I don't think they're hurting at all, but rather think they saw a chance to make more money. The father is in advertising after all.
So did she give the profits to charity?

As to the answers to your questions:

The Telegraph

The Times

I'd love to see a spoof done on this girl and her friends.

My heart bleeds for you over the cost of school fees..but what's the alternative? Not the state system..god forbid?

quote:

Originally posted by dance girl:

My heart bleeds for you over the cost of school fees..but what's the alternative? Not the state system..god forbid?

Not so hasty ! I said to her mother at the outset "How much was that again?" As I explained at the time, there was a perfectly good state school almost next door to our London address . "For that exact money", I went on calmly and logically, "we could keep a racehorse in training. So why didn't we put our daughter in the local school, buy a filly in the Autumn sales, put the filly in training; you never know,we might win something; and retire the filly later as a brood mare? We could be in profit,but certainly have spent about the same, and the daughter would stay at home"

And do you know what she said?

You'll never guess.

Anyhow,do you know, I'll never understand women !

quote:

And do you know what she said?

You'll never guess.

Anyhow,do you know, I'll never understand women !

She said,
"Oh Freddykins darling, why don't we sell the second Bentley, and you drive the Skoda, and then we could do BOTH !"

btw, Roog sent me this..you might want to show it to your wife, if she has strong opinions ( I found it hilarious, but as you may have guessed the advice didn't work for me!):

Women: Know your Limits

quote:

Originally posted by dance girl:

She said,
"Oh Freddykins darling, why don't we sell the second Bentley, and you drive the Skoda, and then we could do BOTH !"

That would not raise anywhere near enough.That's the trouble with you women: no idea about money !

I'm old enough to remember when some of the older generation of men were exactlylike the men in the Harry Enfield piece.

As an aside, what is about as bad is that the biggest problem for a woman seeking selection as a Conservative Party candidate has been not that the men thought her naturally incapable; they did not; but that the women on the selection committee would ask themselves why she wasn't at home supporting her husband (i.e instead of seeking political office) The average age of a woman member of the Party was about 70.They thought that a woman of their class had no need of an earned income of her own, they'd never worked in their whole lives, so there was something not quite right about a woman who was seeking to go out to work as an MP.Being an MP was a man's job, as was any career.That is and was sexism of a peculiarly pernicious variety.

I totally agree with what you said in that last paragraph, Fred. That sort of attitude was prevalent among women who were already in the work force too, until recent years.
I know that when I went on maternity leave to have my first child 18 years ago, and said I intended to return to work, my decision was met with disapproval by female colleagues, particularly those, whose children were older and had left home.
And I think we could start a whole other thread on women being the worst saboteurs of each other's attempts to be successful at work.

I think slang terms have different meanings depending on where you are from.

Elton

quote:

Originally posted by clarebear:
I think slang terms have different meanings depending on where you are from.

Elton

True: your link is obviously American.It gives 'fag' as a synonym for gay. In Britain 'fag' means 'cigarette'. And a 'butt' is just the dead remains of a cigarette or, as we say, ' the fag end', not a part of the anatomy.Figuratively, the 'fag end' of anything is what is left over from anything after the main part is gone: the 'fag end of the weekend' would be the last hours of Sunday

On the other hand, in America 'fag' and 'butt' might also occur in the same sentence