Slang time machine

Every English slang term has a moment it first showed up in print or on someone's lips. We've tagged 4,786 terms with a first attested decade — from 18th-century thieves’ cant through to 2020s internet vocabulary. Pick a decade below.

1980s — 200 terms

Showing top 120 by views

💿 Late Millennial era · 1981-1996 →

shurely shome mishtake

nontraditional student

More on how slang travels through time

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AAVE and internet slang

The single biggest source of new mainstream English vocabulary, and why most of the words you used today started here.

Attestation dates come from etymologies originally sourced from Wiktionary contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0) and editorial expansion authored on Slangora. They reflect the earliest documented use we found for each term, not necessarily the moment it was coined.