Social unrest, an unpopular war, civil rights abuses, growing drug usage and a general distrust of Government provided plenty to draw from for 1960s slang lingo. Most of what you’ll read here is unique to the sixties, some however are words or phrases that were popular in the past but ...
Slang was the use of colorful words, derived from regional or time specific terminology, used in place of more formal words. Many time frames and cultures have their own unique slang. For example, during the 20th century on Earth, several cultural moveme
Where the lip of the wave breaks over a surfer, almost a barrel but not quite."I just got a coverup." Cowabunga Slang from 1960's surf culture, cried out enthusiastically when surfing —The surfer's cry "Cowabunga" as they climb a 12 foot wall of water and "take the drop." ...
Alleged Origin: Deriving from the word gnarled, “gnarly” reportedly originated with the California surf culture of the 1960s and ‘70s. Gnarled, meanwhile, popped up in the 18th century as a variant of knurled, which harks back to the early 1600s and refers to a knur, defined as “a ...
Where Did It All Come From? The 1950s was also the era of the Beat Generation. Writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg had a profound impact on the slang of the time. Credits: Allen Ginsberg’s website Phrases like “beatnik” (a term for someone who followed the Beat Generation)...
The seminal fluid; ‘fuck’. c.1904 A. Crowley Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden 20: Your gallimaufry is as sore as my gully-raker will be when you’ve clapped me, and pissing is like passing red-hot needles, and the stricture holds my fuck back till the crisis nearly blows its ...
banana - predominantly Australian slang from the 1960s for a £1 note (supposedly because one is 'sweet and acceptable'), although likely derived from earlier English/Australian use, like other slang symbolic of yellow/gold (canary, bumblebee, etc), to refer to a sovereign or guinea or ot...
Where does rim job come from? Before the late 1960s, arim jobwas almost exclusively the domain ofautomotivemechanics: the work of putting newrimsonto a car’swheels. With the rise of the adult film industry in the late 1960–70s,rim jobentered the public discourse as an informal term for...
From the 1960s song by Petula Clark, meaning any enemy target area where lots of anti-aircraft opposition can be expected. During the Vietnam War, flying missions into the Hanoi-Haiphong complex in North Vietnam, which was defended by multiple SAM and conventional AAA sites, was referred to...
In with the old, out with the new, but how old is too old for slang? Let's look at some recent slang words that would be an epic fail to use today.