More 90s slang that is totally embarrassing today, according to our readers
Amy Heckerling spent time hanging around Beverly Hills High School before writing “Clueless,” listening to how teenagers talked, and worked it into the script. Cher’s dialogue has stuck with many of us.
We asked readers which ’90s phrases make them wince now. Three came up first: “As if,” “My bad,” and “No way!” followed by “Way!” We looked into where each one came from, and a few more.
Six slides follow. Each has a named person and a dated source. We also say which phrases actually died.
“As if!”
Alicia Silverstone, as Cher, said it in “Clueless” on July 19, 1995, and teenagers carried it into the hallway the next Monday. The movie didn’t invent it, but it helped popularize it. After the movie came out, the word “clueless” appeared far more often in everyday speech, according to Jen Chaney, author of “As If!”
Heckerling did invent some of the film’s lines. “A full-on Monet,” Cher’s put-down of a rival, was one of hers.
“My bad”
It started on basketball courts. One early print appearance is a teen slang column in the Montgomery Advertiser on May 3, 1981, per one slang history. Manute Bol helped popularize it, and Cher said it in “Clueless” after swerving around a cyclist.
Readers flagged it, but this is the odd one out. It never went away, and one dictionary calls it one of the few ’90s phrases that survived.
“No way!” “Way!”
Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar had a call-and-response for everything. Mike Myers and Dana Carvey brought it from “Saturday Night Live,” where “Wayne’s World” ran from 1989, to the big screen on February 14, 1992. Wayne popularized “No Way! Way!” and “Party On!” as ’90s trademarks.
The movie was shot in 34 days and made more than $183 million worldwide.
“Not!”
You said something nice, paused, and then added: “Not!” Wayne’s other big contributions were “Schwing!” and “Not!”; one retrospective says they became an instant sensation.
It was a one-trick joke. It aged accordingly.
“Talk to the hand”
Martin Lawrence delivered it on his Fox sitcom “Martin,” which ran from 1992 to 1997, and it spread from there. Fran Drescher’s “The Beautician and the Beast,” released February 7, 1997, put the gesture on every trailer. It had already shown up in a 1995 Indianapolis magazine.
Dictionary.com says it’s pretty rare to hear today.
“Whassup?”
Charles Stone III and his childhood friends from Philadelphia said it to each other as teenagers. In 1999, Stone made a short film about it, “True.” It reached Budweiser’s agency, and creative director Vinny Warren pushed for the ad. It debuted on “Monday Night Football” in December 1999 and ran again in Super Bowl XXXIV.
“It was just a bunch of guys in high school who were crazy,” said Paul Williams, one of the friends, about how it started.
The bottom line
Charles Stone III’s friends were saying “Whassup” to each other long before Budweiser paid for it. “My bad” started on basketball courts, years before Cher said it.
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