KYM Review: The Slang Of 2021

Internet slang is generally illegible to anyone not plugged into the online world 24/7, but if you missed a day on the internet in 2021, chances are, you also missed a new, absolutely nonsensical slang term that was suddenly part of the public lexicon.

This year, hitherto unknown combinations of letters, seemed to spring up out of the ether. Imagine traveling back in time to December 2020 and saying, “In 2021, ‘Sussy Baka’ will become cheugy before ‘Cheugy’ itself becomes cheugy, no cap. You’d likely be banished to the forest for being a witch.

Gen Z is primarily to thank (blame?) for this, as TikTok’s growth in the mainstream helped bring a flurry of new terms to the online space. Also, Sigma Males, NFTs and horny Twitch viewers left an indelible mark on online discourse, helping make 2021 a uniquely bizarre year for slang.

Girlboss / Sigma Males

Slang for “super” versions of genders regularly make their way through the popular lexicon — think Chad, boss bitch, etc. — but slang skewering the idealized versions of gender is much rarer. This year, we got two gender-specific terms that started earnestly but became parodies of super-genders in “Girlboss” and “Sigma Males.”

Both Girlboss and Sigma Males got their start as gender-specific terms to dominate a social space. The “girlboss” was the type of lady who ran her life like the navy, climbing the corporate ladder, stomping on haters, etc. The “sigma male” was a type of superior “alpha male,” a lone wolf who exuded confidence without having to make a show of their superiority (think John Wick). However, the prevalence of these two terms in pop culture soon led memers to satirize these driven stereotypes of gender with a variety of memes, such as Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss Sigma Grindset and many others.

Cheugy

“Cheugy” is the platonic ideal of an “only in current year” slang term. It basically is a type of word to describe someone with very generic tastes, such as The Office pumpkin spice lattes and yoga pants. While the trendy slang for “basic bitch” had been circulating as an inside joke for nearly a decade, it blew up this year thanks to some viral TikToks, causing a minor panic among Millennials who suddenly worried that they were uncool. This was largely due to an April New York Times article on “cheugy” that caused the word to become a trending topic for days and weeks afterward. Ironically enough, once the Olds learned of cheugy, the word largely disappeared from the mainstream, itself becoming “cheugy.”

Skull Emoji

At the beginning of 2021, there was some thought that the Skull emoji may soon take over the “crying laughing” emoji as the predominant way to express laughing online. In January, Emojipedia published a blog post saying that the ever-threatening teens had dubbed the crying laughing emoji “boomer” material and that the hip new thing was the Skull emoji, a shorthand of saying "I’m dead from laughing." As with “cheugy,” this also caused a minor media panic, as news organizations soon published articles letting Millennials know that thing they do (in this case, using a laughing emoji to symbolize laughing) was uncool. Ultimately, it seemed such fears were unfounded. By year's end, the skull emoji didn’t crack the top 10 of most emojis used in 2021. Number 1 was the crying laughing emoji.

No Cap

Among the terms Gen Z introduced in 2021 that scared the Olds, perhaps none was as confusing as “No Cap.” The term ostensibly means “no lie,” but it was bewildering to anyone over the age of 22 how “lie” became “cap.” The term bubbled up through Atlanta hip-hop in the late 2010s before becoming a staple of TikTok and Gen Z slang, culminating in a horrifying SNL sketch where Elon Musk played a “Gen Z Doctor,” replete with 35-year-old comedians struggling their way through saying phrases like “no cap.” Considering Millennials’ fear of Gen Z, the sketch may have been a coordinated attack to make Gen Z phrases uncool. That’s the only way to explain how such an abysmal sketch made it to network television.

Skamtebord

One of the weirdest trends of this year was a series of memes based simply on misspelled words. These have gone under the name “skamtebord” in honor of the tweet that started it all: a doctored text message exchange between Tony Hawk and a fan in which Hawk types the misspelling of “skateboard.” After brewing for a couple of years on Reddit, variations on the trend took off in 2021 as memes like Bogos Binted and I Forgor became staple hits in the memescape, much to the confusion of anyone who thought the memes were stupid. Still, while the inherent humor in misspelling a word may be juvenile, that means it also has staying power, so don’t be surprised if we see similar memes in the future.

Sheesh

“Sheesh,” a particularly Gen Z and hip-hop culture way of saying “oh my god” or “damn,” hit TikTok hard this year thanks to a video where a choir of teens coo “sheesh” at a non-plussed frog. The weird bit of Gen Z humor soon dominated the platform, as thousands of videos were created using the “Sheeeesh” sound, making TikTok a cacophony of “sheesh” for months. Users often paired the sound with the “ice in my veins” pose, resulting in a moment in time where the hottest trend was holding your fingers up to your arm and going “sheeeeesh.” The trend ultimately died down after a spring’s worth of sheeshing, and though sheeshing isn’t chichi anymore, sheesh shall surely show itself to be a memorable trend in years to come.

Submissive and Breedable

While this year’s slang was significantly less horny than 2020’s, one particularly bewildering sexual slang term was “Submissive and Breedable.” Only, use of “submissive and breedable” wasn’t as horny as you might think. The term instead was used as a sort of pleasant compliment, like “Hello, friend! You’re looking particularly submissive and breedable today :).” This was because the term originated in a tweet that joked, “Normalize platonically telling you’re bros they look submissive and breedable!”

Soon, people began doing just that, telling their favorite streamers like Cr1TiKaL that they looked “submissive and breedable” and that they should “keep up the good work!” This culminated in streamer F1NN5TER, known for cross-dressing as a character named Rose, accidentally becoming the “face” of submissive and breedable, thanks to a video done by us at Know Your Meme. While it’s unlikely submissive and breedable will have much staying power beyond 2021, it was a weirdly wholesome trend in memes this year.

Screenshotting NFTs

This year was certainly one where we were all forced to learn what a non-fungible token, or “NFT” for short, was. The incredibly divisive new hotness in cryptocurrency generated many enthusiasts, seemingly all of whom use an A.I.-generated ape as their avatar on Twitter, but many more were exhausted and angry at the trend for its environmental effects and propensity for scams. For this reason, while there are many pro-NFT and crypto terms to choose from, it seems only fitting that the NFT-slang term that defined 2021 is a negative one.

Because the general understanding of NFTs is “owning a jpeg,” the anti-NFT crowd loved to needle NFT enthusiasts expressing their woes – of which there were a lot – with jokes about how they had “right-clicked, saved” or “screenshot” their precious NFTs. Every post about NFTs seemed to be followed by a troll threatening to save their NFTs in their library, and while that’s not quite the value of NFTs, the reality of an NFT owner having a “certificate of ownership” seemed just as absurd to anyone not crypto-pilled.

Touch Grass

In a year when many people were out of pocket with their hot takes, a new term came to tell people to log off: “Touch Grass.” The term is basically shorthand for, “You’ve been online too long. Go outside,” and it was extremely necessary for people who like to spend their days malding (see: Twitter users). In addition to Twitter, “touch grass” hit TikTok and YouTube, inspiring spinoff memes like “Surprisingly, I still think X is bad” and “I don’t need to touch grass, I need to be shot.” While it’s unclear if the use of “touch grass” ever inspired anyone to go outside and touch grass, it was certainly a necessary reminder that we should all log off, even if we never will.

Sussy Baka

The “Sus”-sening of language continued into 2021 thanks to Among Us’ continued prevalence in meme culture, but while there thankfully wasn’t an overload of “sus” this year like there was in 2020, one particularly bizarre iteration on sus is worthy of mention: Sussy Baka. The phrase is the brainchild of TikToker @FrogsKarl, who asked that TikToker @akeamfrancis2 say the phrase in a video, resulting in an unholy combination of words that shouldn’t exist. The phrase went on to become an ironic meme and was paired with cringe emoji in image macros. Eventually, Dean Norris of Breaking Bad fame said the phrase in a Cameo, bringing the meme to even greater heights.

Watch the video version of our recap on 2021's best slang below.

Looking for more of this year's best viral phenomena and memes? Be sure to check out our other 2021 meme roundups below:

• The Top 10 Memes Of 2021
• KYM Staff Picks Of 2021
• The Top Gaming Memes Of 2021
• The Slang Of 2021
• The Most 2021 Stories Of 2021
• Top 10 Streamer Moments Of 2021
• Breakthrough Meme Formats Of The Year
• 10 Best TikToks Of 2021
• Top 10 Lewd Memes Of The Year
• Trolls, Rumors And Hoaxes Of The Year
• Top Exploitables Of 2021
• Top Meme Creators Of 2021
• Top Meme Revivals Of 2021
• Best Gimmick Twitter Accounts Of 2021