Deciphering the English language for those of us who thought we knew how to speak it

Rizz. If you don’t know what that means, you can consider yourself over the age of 25 and, therefore, out of contention as one of Leonardo Di Caprio’s potential girlfriends for 2024.

I’m definitely over the age of 25, not only because I just assumed

Rizz was a dirty word, but because it’s 9am and I’ve had to have 3 cups of coffee, 7 biscuits and 15 sour sweets just to stay alive.

To put you in the picture, ‘rizz’ was voted (by whom I don’t know, presumably the same group that voted ‘Boaty McBoatface’ as an eloquent name for a $300-million ship) as the 2023 Oxford Word of the Year. This is undoubtedly their attempt at making dictionaries relevant in an era where anyone can ask the nearest smartphone what a word means, while the majority don’t actually care.

So, what does it even mean and how does one use it in everyday conversation as a way to appear hip and happening among the youth?

Can you rizz your nose? Do you break into a rizz on the dancefloor? Did the dog take a rizz on the fire hydrant? Maybe its meaning will change, but for now, rizz is defined as ‘style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner’. Presumably whittled down from ‘charismatic’, but at this point, it could just as likely be an abbreviation of ‘risotto’.

For someone who is paid by the word, I’m always happy when there are neologisms (smart hey?) emerging in our vernacular (that’s a big one, should get paid by the letter there), but my ascending age and descending mental faculties as a result of years of pounding sour sweets and sour apple shots are making it harder to grasp what regular words mean, let alone learning new ones.

But I have to try my best because my children are fast becoming pre-teens and I can barely follow what they’re saying to me now, even with Google Translate. If I’m not up-to-date on this young person lingo, I might be raising delinquents who vape marshmallow-flavoured tobacco, drink light beer and listen to jazz. I can’t have that, so I started researching some of the other top contenders in the Oxford list to really impress the 11-year-olds.

Swiftie. That was another popular one. It doesn’t mean the same as a ‘quickie’ unfortunately, but rather an enthusiastic fan of the pop star, Taylor Swift. ‘Enthusiastic fan’ is a bit redundant because I have yet to meet a fan of this woman who is anything but enthusiastic – but can you blame them? Have you seen her? The woman could sing Ryperd on repeat for four hours and still have legions of fans across the globe just going according to her looks. She could bottle her farts and they’d sell for more than gold.

You might’ve heard of influencers – people who get paid to share on social media how wonderful products are – but have you heard of ‘de-influencing’? This is a job I could excel at. You just sit on social media and harp on about how awful a product is, discouraging people as much as you can. Many claim they’re doing it ‘for the environment’, but you know they just want to have a moan.

‘Prompt’ isn’t a quickie either, but rather an instruction you give to an artificial intelligence programme, like saying to Google Translate, ‘Why do my children keep referring to me as a cringe cheugy Karen boomer with no drip’? Then there’s a ‘heat dome’ which is not where you fart under the covers and they balloon up, but rather something to do with hot weather and climate change. Lame.

Gen Z has also given us some new terms when it comes to relationships, whatever the gender, sexual inclination or apparent rizz factor. Where we once had ‘casual sex’ or ‘friends with benefits’, these youngsters now have a ‘situationship’ which is a ‘romantic or sexual relationship that is not considered to be formal or established’. Whatever way you spin it, some guy doesn’t want to buy the cow and the girl is pretending she’s ok with it. You can’t change human nature, no matter your situationship.

‘Parasocial’ is essentially all those Swifties thinking they’re friends with the celebrity rather than just cash cows, and your ‘beige flag’ is a character trait that shows someone how boring you are … like reading newspaper columns.