20 Slang Words and Phrases That Are Much Older Than You’d Think

Our language is full of surprises, like when finding out the true age of a word that feels a lot more modern than it actually is.

We might associate it with computers, but the original antivirus, for instance, was a medical term coined way back in 1914. That’s the same year that time travel was coined (although HG Wells had been talking about time travelers since the 1890s). The first spaceship was dreamed up in 1880, which was the same year as the first astronaut. 

But this group of words also includes some surprisingly slangy-sounding words, phrases, and even acronyms, whose use historically extends a lot further back than we might ever have expected. 

1. BIZ 
2. CELEB 
3. CONFAB 
4. COOL 
5. CRIB 
6. DUDE 
7. EXTRA 
8. FLY 
9. HANG OUT 
10. HIGH 
11. HOT 
12. HYPER 
13. LEGIT 
14. LOL 
15. NATCH 
16. NOT! 
17. OMG 
18. SMASH 
19. SO-SO 
20. SPILL 

BIZ 

This shortening of business is now more than a century and a half old. The American humorist Charles Farrar Browne (a favorite of Abraham Lincoln, no less) wrote “I must forth to my Biz” way back in 1862, in one of the many works he wrote under the pen name Artemus Ward.

CELEB 

As a word for fame or renown, celebrity itself is perhaps older than you think, and was first recorded in the writings of Canterbury Tales author Geoffrey Chaucer. It first came to be used of a famous person in 1831, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and was then shortened to celeb way back in 1907. 

CONFAB 

As a colloquialism for a short chat, confab is clipped from the far older (and far more complicated) word confabulation, which has Latin roots and dates back to the 15th century. Confab itself, though, is still surprisingly old: confabulation was first trimmed down this way in 1701.

COOL 

Cool has meant slightly cold since the days of Old English, and over the past thousand years or so has been used metaphorically in various contexts to refer, often somewhat negatively, to people’s lack of interest, enthusiasm, or passion.

The more positive use of cool to variously mean fashionable, sophisticated, or inspired is a more modern invention, but when it first appeared is debatable. The Oxford English Dictionary has found a single use of the phrase “Dat’s cool!” dating back to 1884, but notes that the context in which it was used makes it impossible to tell whether it’s positive or negative. The first unquestionably positive use of the word, though, dates back to 1918. 

CRIB 

MTV’s Cribs might have debuted in 2000, but William Shakespeare used crib to mean a dwelling in Henry IV: Part 2, written sometime in the 1590s. (Although admittedly the context suggests he likely meant the word to mean a fairly cramped and shabby hovel, not an MTV-style mansion.) 

DUDE 

No one is entirely sure where the word dude came from, but given that it first emerged in America as far back as 1883—and originally referred to a dandyish fop—it’s not unconvincingly been suggested that it might be a shortening of Yankee Doodle. Another theory, though, claims it might be clipped from attitude, or else extended from duds, meaning clothing, which dates back to the 16th century. 

EXTRA 

Meaning additional or additionally, extra was borrowed into English from Latin in the 16th century. The slangier use of extra to describe something particularly good or impressive, however, first emerged back in 1917—although likely not as an extension of the older word, but as a shortening of extraordinary. 

FLY 

Fly was first used as an adjective way back in 1724, originally in the sense of someone being keenly aware or attentive. But the even more contemporary-sounding use of fly to describe someone or something particularly fashionable or stylishly striking is almost as old: “a fly white petticoat” was mentioned in the memoirs of an English highwayman named John Poulter in 1753. 

HANG OUT 

As modern as this might sound, even the Victorians would have been fairly familiar with the concept of hanging out. As a verb, meaning to pass time together, to hang out dates back as far as 1846, while as a noun, meaning somewhere you like to hang out, it dates to 1852. 

HIGH 

High has been used to mean elevated since the Old English period. But in relation to being intoxicated, high has been used to describe the effects of drugs since 1935, while people have been getting high on alcohol since 1607. 

HOT 

Just like high, hot has been used to mean excessively warm since the days of Old English. But its more figurative use in relation to someone’s attractiveness is nonetheless well established: in the 14th century it was used personally, to refer to someone feeling a flustered state of desire, and by 1886 had come to be used to describe someone who is sexually attractive. 

HYPER 

As a description of someone who appears highly-strung or full of energy, the word hyperactive was first cut down to “hyper” in 1942. The word hyperactive itself, though, is likely a little older than you might think: it was first used in 1867, while hyperactivity dates from 1888. 

LEGIT 

Legitimate was first cut down to just “legit” in 19th-century theatrical parlance, and was originally used in reference to legitimate drama (as opposed to less meritable farces and variety comedies). 

LOL 

LOL was first used to mean “laugh out loud” in Usenet groups back in the mid 1990s (and has seemingly been pronounced as a word, “lol” rhyming with “knoll,” since the early 2010s). Its very earliest meaning, however, was somewhat different: in the first known written record of the acronym LOL, it was used to mean “little old lady” in a 1960 newspaper article in San Francisco. 

NATCH 

The adverb naturally was first clipped down to “natch” in the jazzy slang of the early 1940s. 

NOT! 

It might have become a popular ‘90s fad thanks to the Wayne’s World movies, but there is a written reference to tagging “not!” onto the end of sentences to suddenly imply the complete opposite, since as far back as the mid 19th century—in none other than the novels of George Eliot.

Writing in 1860, Eliot’s Mill on the Floss contains the line, “She would make a sweet, strange, troublesome, adorable wife to some man or other, but he would never have chosen her himself. Did she feel as he did? He hoped she did—not.”  

OMG 

Previously only known from the ‘90s jargon of internet chatrooms, in the early 2000s, the earliest known use of the acronym OMG was discovered in a letter written in 1917 to future prime minister Winston Churchill by John Fisher, who had served as the British Royal Navy’s First Sea Lord during the early years of World War I. 

SMASH 

Etymologically, smash was probably originally onomatopoeic, and in relation to a noisy crashing together likely dates back to the late 1600s. In the more figurative sense of a resounding success, though, the first “smash hits” were two Broadway productions, The Fool and The Rise of Rosie O’Reilly, that were so labelled by Variety magazine back in 1923.

Oddly, before then, a cultural smash was the complete opposite: the Oxford English Dictionary has unearthed a handful of evidence of the word being used in relation to a crushing commercial failure (more akin to a market crash, rather than a breakout smash) from as early as 1839. 

SO-SO 

If things aren’t quite bad, but they’re not quite good either, you might be tempted to call them so-so. As colloquial as that might sound, though, people have been describing intermediate or middling circumstances this way since the days of Henry VIII. Lesclarcissement de la Langue Françoyse [sic.] was one of the very first major bilingual dictionaries of French and English, written by the English priest and scholar John Palsgrave (who worked as a tutor to the royal household under King Henry himself) way back in 1530.

In it, Palsgrave gave “so so” as a fitting English translation of the similarly idiomatic French expression tellement quellement. 

SPILL 

Oddly, to spill first meant to kill or destroy, and it has been suggested that this somewhat bloody original meaning might relate to other similar words for bloodied animal fur or even flayed skin; it was in the sense of putting something to waste that it later came to be used of messily dropping the contents of something.

The more contemporary sense of “spilling” gossip or a secret, though, is still over 200 years old: in early 19th-century slang, to spill meant to betray a fellow criminal or confidante to the authorities, and then by the turn of the 20th century, the word had likewise come to mean to reveal or disclose something secret or personal.