Opinion
By Azu Ishiekwene
I was watching the evening news on Monday night when
two presenters used a word at different times that jolted
me. I’ve heard and seen that word used often, especially
by millennials and Gen Z, but I didn’t entirely pay heed
because they were mostly in informal settings.
Anyways – I meant to write, anyway – I was jolted to
hear that word, anyways, twice from two TV presenters
on different programmes on the same station just
minutes apart! My Use of English teachers would have
beaten the straying “s” out of me if I had used that word
even in error.
But that was at another time, before young adults
invented more new words and other tokens of social
expression, including memes and abbreviations, than at
any other time in recent lexical history, thanks to
technology and the prevalence of social media.
Words avant-garde
I’m trying to adjust, but I’m not quite there yet. And in
this transition to a brave new world of avant-garde
lexicography dominated by young adults, it’s improbable
that I would have considered, anyways, a jarringly
colloquial word, as proper form.
However, Oxford United Press (OUP), the bastion of
rectitude, is leading the world in de-sensitising
squeamishness in the use of the English language. In
other words, sooner than later, I might well find myself
loving and even using, anyways, in proper
communication.
In a language and literary study in 2023 for the Word of
the Year, OUP crowned “rizz” as the winner. The Press
said it created a shortlist of eight words “all chosen to
reflect the mood, ethos, and preoccupations” of the
previous year and “rizz” emerged as the favourite after
over 30,000 language lovers worldwide pared down the
word soup to four finalists: rizz, Swiftie, prompt, and
situationship.
Rizz up, darling!
In case you’re interested in a brief history of the
etymology of how rizz might soon become mainstream,
OUP explained that just as the fridge was from
refrigerator and flu was from influenza, rizz (a noun),
which can also be used as a verb, as in “to rizz up,”
meaning to attract, seduce, or chat up), has its roots the
word “charisma.”
I’m unsure which word might win OUP’s crown in 2024,
but I have an in-vogue word slate that would be difficult
to ignore. Perhaps lovers of language, especially
millennials and Gen Z, the generational curators of these
species of unusual words, might help crown a winner
from my list for 2024 and share that list on any of my
social media handles @azu ishiekwene or email
azuishiekwene@gmail.com. Or text Word of the Year to
+234 805 210 0356.
The first candidate for me is “steeze.” I was confused the
first time I heard it and couldn’t immediately determine
its meaning. An English language coach and content
creator on Quora, Jasveer Kaur, described “steeze” as “A
slang term which is a mix of ‘style’ and ‘ease’, that means
‘looking effortlessly cool, i.e., charisma or grace.” It’s a
cousin of rizz, or “composure”, another synonym for
steeze from the Gen Z corpus.
The lit vs the ill-lit
And how about “lit?” When I first heard that someone
was “lit”, I thought they were alight, literally burning! It
turned out that I was hugely mistaken. “Lit”, I later found
out, means something different. It’s a slang derived from
African American Vernacular English, which gained
popularity in the 2000s. It’s been around for quite a
while, but somehow, the “ill-lit” like me never quite
thought it would soon be making its way to the
mainstream.
But thanks to hip-hop and pop culture, it has become a
favourite expression among millennials and Gen Z. If you
say, “The concert last night was lit,” for example, or “Her
performance in the game was lit,” there’s nothing more
to add. It’s the highest expression of excitement and
enthusiasm. In the same way, my father’s highest
compliment was “noble”, as in “You’ve done noble!”
Rizz, lit, and dope, I’m told, are in the same class, with
ritz (derived from the ostentation of Ritz, the famous
hotel and hospitality brand) being at the higher end of
the word spectrum.
Who’s the simp?
How about “simp”? It’s not exactly a new word. It has
evolved, losing five original letters in the process, but
gaining new meaning and currency with TikTokers. Back
in the day, that word used to be “simpleton”, a man or
woman generally thought or believed to be naïve,
foolish. Hip-hop culture in the mouth of younger adults
gave it a makeover.
They twisted it against men today, and now a simp is
often used to describe a man who is overly anxious to
please women. This seems to be the opposite of
“demure,” a word formerly used to describe modesty in
young ladies but now repurposed to convey cuteness in
both sexes.
Instead of the ‘50-50 Love’, Teddy Pendergrass crooned
about in his famous album, a “simp” is a man who
doesn’t mind five percent or less back for his affection
and empathy in exchange for 100 percent. He is if you
get my drift, a woman wrapper.
If you are already “vibing”, millennial-speak for “losing
oneself in great music or conversation”, or feeling
“shook”, the colloquial noun or verb for “surprise”, then
welcome to the evolving vocab world of young adults
fostered by the Internet. From activism to fashion, sports
and dating, the language topography is changing, leaving
older adults in a trail of incomprehensible slang.
Simply steeze
In the slang line-up for 2024, anyways, steeze, lit, rizz,
vibing, shook, and simp are in the race. But the stage
would be incomplete without “ghost” (to suddenly stop
communicating with someone, as in ‘he ghosted me after
our last meeting’), “no cap”, (the damn truth, no
embellishment), as in ‘petrol prices will never return to
N470/litre, no cap, or “snack”, (someone attractive, as in
‘she’s looking like a snack in that outfit’).
While these words have a global resonance, one would
undoubtedly be at the top of your final list if you were a
Nigerian young adult—at home or in the Diaspora: “E
choke!” The harsher, more menacing version is “Hunger
dey!” However, this latter expression has a broader
application and is quite popular among older adults.
When young Nigerian adults say, “E choke,” they express
the country’s severe economic hardship. This hardship
has left many of them unable to have that sharwama or
pizza, fix the braids they’d love to, or even chat for a long
without resorting to data mincing.
This ethos was expressed in the streets of many Nigerian
states in August, when protesters, mostly angry youths,
staged demonstrations captioned #Endbadgovernance,
the lightning rod for economic hardship. But the word is
used in more than one sense. It also conveys
overwhelming pleasure, as in “Give me more, even if it
kills me!”
E choke!
My five finalists for the words that most captured
younger adults’ moods, feelings, imagination, and ethos
in 2024 are e choke, steeze, no cap, vibing, and
composure. I struggled to get the language tool on my
laptop to accept these words. I had to overwrite them
many times to retain them, as I wondered how
examination bodies, like the West African Examination
Council (WAEC), would cope with this lexical insurgency.
Is it an indication of the distance these words still have to
travel in the transition from fad to mainstream? Or is
society just too slow to catch up? No matter, as they say
in millennia-speak, las, las, culture, language, and tool
developers would be alright.
Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and
author of the new book Writing for Media and
Monetising It.
5th December, 2024.
C.E.
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