Slang throughout the years

The phrase is sometimes used to mean ‘get going’ or ‘hurry up’. It was explicitly defined that way in the New York Magazine in 1904. “Shake a leg … meaning to ‘hurry up’.”

Let’s shake a leg, you guys. We gotta be there in twenty minutes.

The word groupie originated around 1965 to describe teen-aged girls or young women who began following a particular group or band of musicians on a regular basis. The phenomenon was much older; Mary McCarthy had earlier described it in her novel The Company She Keeps (1942).^[1]

The groupie followed the band around on tour, hoping to catch one of the members coming out of their hotel after hours.

Slap appears to start getting applied to music, specifically, by at least the early 2000s. Now, the origin of slang, especially successful and widespread slang terms like slap, are indeed hard to pin down, but the musical slap is often credited to Bay Area hip-hop slang. (Hyphy, anyone?) It was first entered into Urban Dictionary in 2004.

Rihanna’s new single slaps so hard, I can’t stop listening to it!

The phrase “woke” and to “stay woke” is not new — it began appearing in the 1940s and was first used by African Americans to “literally mean becoming woken up or sensitized to issues of justice

DeSantis leverages the woke agenda for his own purposes.

Bae is a slang term of endearment^[1] primarily used among youth in communities. It came into widespread use around 2013 and 2014 through social media and hip-hop and R&B lyrics.

It’s bad when bae doesn’t reply to your texts.

(slang) To vomit. US 1960s, of uncertain origin, apparently derived from a use of the male name Ralph, but perhaps imitative.

After six shots, Jim spent the rest of the night ralphing.

Goldbricking in the modern sense of malingering developed around the time of World War II, in the U.S. Army. The term was extended to refer to anybody not pulling his weight—a loafer who gives the appearance of working without actually accomplishing much

Jim’s group had to work extra hours because Jim was such a goldbricker.

Unknown origin, probably related to boogie-woogie music.

Let’s boogie!

The term yuppie originated in the 1980s and is used to refer to young urban professionals who are successful in business and considerably affluent.

He was disappointed in her choice of restaurant, a noisy, yuppie hang-out, the sort of place where design took precedence over comfort.

23 skidoo is an American slang phrase generally referring to leaving quickly, being forced to leave quickly by someone else, or taking advantage of a propitious opportunity to leave.

It isn’t certain how ’23-skidoo’ (or skiddoo) originated. Whatever the source, the term was much in vogue in the USA during 1906.

The police threatened to imprison everyone in the crowd that did not 23 skidoo from the park