About

Banned Words Lists At Schools, also known as Banned Words In Classrooms or Banned Words / Phrases In School, refers to a series of posters and banners showing a list of banned words in various classrooms, which mainly consist of internet slang like skibdii, rizz, sigma, Diddy and many other brainrot terms. Memes showing school banned word lists surfaced in November 2016 but gained a significant increase in the 2020s alongside the rise of slang overload trends.

Origin

Although the exact first instance of a banned word list at a school or class is unknown, one of the earliest found examples was posted on Instagram^[1] by user @bitchuguesseditt on November 1st, 2016. The post was screenshotted by Pinterest^[2] user @rissyoliver, which shows a printed paper showing a list of banned words and phrases from classrooms that included expressions like "bruh," "chill," "cuz," and "bye Felicia." The post (seen below) amassed more than 500 likes in eight years.

Spread

Going into the 2020s, banned word posters in classrooms around different schools started to appear on social media more frequently, comically referencing pop culture expressions and slang overload terms like "rizz" and "skibidi."

For example, on November 20th, 2024, X^[3] user @dxckiii uploaded a picture of a "banned words" list in a classroom, which shows a list of 24 words that are forbidden to be said during class by the teacher (seen below), which amassed more than 11 million views and 246,000 likes in two days.

On June 3rd, 2024, Redditor^[4] u/Dizzy-Lingonberry-57 uploaded a picture to the subreddit /r/ComedyHell of a different "banned words" banner (seen below), which amassed more than 780 upvotes and 99 comments in five months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References