New Delhi: Gen Z loves its slang—the more incomprehensible the better. Topping the list of most controversial slangs in Britain right now is “picky bits,’ after The Telegraph deemed it the “most revolting phrase in the English language.” The term entered public conversation after global retail chain Marks and Spencers used it to describe a spread of picnic nibbles, or a “British tapas.”
A recent survey by YouGov, global online market research and data analytics company, threw up some other unusual terms that Gen Z Britons use for communication.
Cozzie livs, tommy K, and menty Bs
The list includes the words ‘holibobs’ for holidays; ‘menty b,’ for mental breakdown; ‘the rona’ for coronavirus; and ‘cozzie livs’ for cost of living.
A surprising many on the list refer to food. For example, ‘maccy ds,’ stands for global fast food chain, MacDonalds; ‘tommy k’ for tomato ketchup; and ‘jacky p’ for jacket potatoes.
Most peculiar is the UK specific slang, which includes ‘statey funes’ for Queen Elizabeth II’s ‘state funeral’ in 2022; and ‘platty joobs’ for Queen Elizabeth II’s ‘Platinum Jubilee’ in 2022.
Britons hate the slang ‘statey funes’
‘Maccy D’ tops the list of the most used slang, with 43 per cent of respondents having used the term before. ‘statey funes’ was at the bottom, with only 1 per cent of respondents claiming to have used it. Slangs like ‘the rona,’ ‘tommy k,’ and ‘menty b,’ lay somewhere in the middle.
Despite The Telegraph’s tirade against ‘picky bits,’ only 13% of YouGov’s respondents claimed to dislike the term, while 12% claimed to hate it. This compared to the 55% who claimed to hate ‘statey fumes,’ and the 45% that hates ‘menty b.’
The survey also found that people who hadn’t heard of terms such as ‘picky bits,’ ‘holibobs,’ and ‘cozzie livs,’ were more likely to dislike them than those who were familiar with them. Older people, aged 50 years and above, were generally less likely to have heard these terms than adults aged between 18 and 49 years.
The online survey had a sample size of 2,082 adults, living in Great Britain.
(Edited by Aakriti Handa)