Name: Mumsnet slang
Age: Almost 20 years old.
Appearance: To the outsider, cryptic.
Is it some kind of code? Sort of. It’s a relatively new form of slang, spoken by the users of Mumsnet, a parenting website launched in 2000.
Can you give me some examples? YABOS.
I don’t understand. Does that mean yes? No. It’s an acronym that stands for “you are being oversensitive”.
I see. There’s also AIBU, which is keyboard shorthand for “am I being unreasonable?”
It’s good, but it’s not quite up there with “bottle and glass”, is it? According to Jonathon Green, it is positively unprecedented.
Who is Jonathon Green? He’s a lexicographer and the author of Sounds & Furies: The Love-Hate Relationship Between Women and Slang. He claims these Mumsnet-based coinages are a rare example of slang being created from a female perspective.
Really? I can’t believe that’s never happened before. It has – in the 1920s, flappers had their own form of slang, but historically its creation has been male-dominated. “There are around 1,750 slang words for sex over the last 500 years,” Green says, “and I would suggest at least 1,700 are from a male point of view.”
And Mumsnet is changing all that? Green maintains that its digital reach has led to a large and wide-ranging vocabulary. “It’s got hundreds of thousands of users, which means its influence on slang is quite substantial,” he says. “It’s perforating through into all sorts of people you wouldn’t expect to use it.”
I want to learn it. Teach me! OK, listen and repeat: SAHM means “stay at home mother”; D&V stands for “diarrhoea and vomiting”.
Why would you need an acronym for that? It’s a parenting website.
Fair enough. The glossary also boasts such childbirth-related acronyms as SWI (“shagging with intent”, AKA trying to conceive) and VBAC (“vaginal birth after caesarean section”)
I actually think I’m getting the hang of this. Test me on a few more. How about YANBU and OTOH?
I’m guessing the first one means “you are not being unreasonable”. And the latter must be “on the other hand?” Very good. Now try FWIW and DH.
Too easy! “For what it’s worth” and “dickhead”. Actually, DH stands for “darling husband”, although in practice it often means more or less the same thing.
Do say: “Help! DH is being a complete DH, again.”
Don’t say: “AIBU to think that a book about female slang ought to be written by a woman?”
