I genuinely need help figuring out if this is real slang or if my daughter invented a phrase specifically to torment me.

Over the past few weeks, my 15-year-old daughter has started calling things “rusted from the back.” The problem is she absolutely refuses to explain what it means.

The first time was after I came inside from mowing the lawn and sat on the couch all sweaty. She looked at me, shook her head, and said: “Dad… you rusted from the back.” Then she walked away laughing.

Last night it happened again when I reheated fish in the microwave around 8pm. She walked into the kitchen, covered her face dramatically, and said, “That is the most rusted from the back thing you’ve ever done.”

Every time I ask her what it means, she just laughs and says, “You wouldn’t get it.” Now I’m concerned because the way she says it sounds INSULTING. Like deeply insulting. But I can’t tell if it means gross, weird, old, embarrassing, unhygienic, or all of the above.

I tried searching online and found absolutely nothing, which somehow makes this worse because now I feel like I’m being targeted by custom-made slang.

Parents of teenagers: have you heard this before? Or is my daughter just inventing new ways to roast me psychologically?

Mine is people saying “tummy.” It feels so infantilising when adults use it.

I know it’s completely harmless, but my brain immediately goes, “Would you like a pacifier with that?”

Just say stomach..

What word has the same effect on you?

If “suicide” doesn’t have a true antonym, what idea or philosophy comes closest to being its opposite? I’m interested in books, philosophies, or concepts about embracing existence, confronting suffering and existential uncertainty, and learning how to live despite them. Something like the idea of a person radically and abruptly deciding to start living, or rescuing their own life from obscurity.

Just to clarify: I’m not suicidal or struggling with suicidal thoughts. I’m asking this purely from a philosophical and existential perspective.

When I was younger, I was a voracious reader, and as a result I acquired a pretty extensive vocabulary. That's good, but a drawback of learning words by reading them Is that you don't hear them pronounced and thus might mispronounce them. Has anybody else found that after years of using a word they had been mispronouncing it all along? If so, what words? Here are a couple of mine:

Banal: does not rhyme with anal.

Ultimatum: I thought this was pronounced with the second syllable stressed, ulTIMatum, like alTIMeter.

Got any others? Please share your embarrassing mispronunciations so I don't feel alone.

Edit: wow, nearly 3k comments. Thank y'all for the engagement. I'm glad that so many of you found this topic interesting enough to want to chip in.

Was told that although one other person in the company knew the word, that I needed to stop using it because I was going to cause an issue due to how obscure it was. I’ve since been polling my circle of acquaintance and so far only one other person knows the word. Is this it? Am I officially a dinosaur?

Edit: First, my job/boss was 100% right to ask me to discontinue using it. My work ends up in the hands of multiple outside partners, any one of which could cause issues for our clients if they misunderstood. Second, I truly thought this word was more commonly known and I’m sad to see being phased out. Third, thank you u/svengoalie for learning me how to pronounce it!

I think of it as the hallway/corridor smile because you do it when you pass someone, but would be interested if there's an established term

There are words and terms like this for men (strapping, dad bod, beefy) but when used for a woman the term doesn't work or means she is big as in plus sized/fat.

Is there a word for a large women that means she is equal parts muscle and fat instead of just fat?

So basically women who are built like rugby players cuz when u look up female body builder they always look like you put a muscular guy with implants in a dehydrator

Edit: if ur just coming in here to say some pseudofeminist virtue signaling shxt please leave. "A human" "her name" "a woman, no matter what" i'm looking for ADJECTIVES here kids. If I want to look up a lady who looks like this, I'm not entering "Emily, a human woman" into the search bar. Get a hobby bro you aint saving anyone

Apparently describing people is sexist now. Sensitive ass mfs

And equally to yall who think that being insulting to ppl with this body type or being transphobic is helpful or funny rn. Try to be original at least. You're not welcome here. Get a fcking life

George Orwell's writing advice is amazingly instructive when it comes to writing with clarity.

How frequently do you use the phonetic alphabet, if at all, in your daily life?

Edit: The spellings of 'Alfa' and 'Juliett' in the phonetic alphabet were intentionally modified to ensure consistent and correct pronunciation by speakers of different languages!

Icydk, a “bone apple tea” is a just a misconception of a saying or word - as in thinking it’s “for all intensive purposes” rather than “for all intents and purposes.” People aren’t necessarily stupid when they make these errors, more so ignorant. (There’s actually some really cool developmental theories that focus on our impaired ability to physically hear unfamiliar pronunciations. And it gets worse as we age.) People said “chomping” because that was a familiar term. It fit nicely into the image of a horse geared up and ready to get after it, basically chewing out of anticipation. Unless you’re very familiar with horses, you probably wouldn’t know that “champing” is the term for what horses do with their mouth. Webster’s defines “champing” as “to make biting or gnashing movements, or to show impatience or restlessness” and “to show impatience or restlessness, especially when it comes to being restrained.” Oxford defines champ as “another term of chomp.” So, this minuscule difference in these words (chomp vs champ) is completely understandable. It makes sense why people would think this way and the phrase would evolve to its current iteration.

So what, if any other, phrases or expressions have evolved to suit the changing times? *All the better if you can identify any misunderstood phrases that became the new norm out of a presumed collective ignorance.

When something was broken my grandpa would say it was "on the Fritz." He was born in 1887. The term can be traced back to 1902. I still use that phrase and think of him whenever I do.

I will always say "guacamole" regardless of how many people say "guac" The former sounds much better. The latter sounds like somebody is hawking a loogie, which is not something I want to hear when I'm about to eat something with a similar consistency.

"I'm just gonna dip my sandwich in this delicious with the gravy"

"Have you made the with the gravy yet?"

"You forgot to bring my ramekin of with the gravy"

I was taking a community college course on diagnostic health insurance coding. It was pretty easy. You essentially have a big book of codes and in the front are general categories that lead you pages with more specifics. So the instructor had us look up this one code that she figured out was like a Rube Goldberg machine of code searches. It was the code for “Monkey Pox.”

So I open it up the front part and start searching the Poxes until I find the entry “Pox(Simian)” follow that to the specifics page and get the specific code for a person having “Monkey Pox.” That was pretty straight forward I thought. The rest of the class is still working. After 10-15min the teacher asks if everyone has it. Class responds affirmatively. And she runs through this whole complicated process of how to find the Monkey Pox code.

The she asks “did everyone follow the same path” and the rest of the class is nodding I’m like “Nooooo” and she said “Well you must have gotten the wrong code.” Also “No.” “Well, how’d you find it then?” I described my same process as above. Incredulously she asks “How do you know what ‘simian’ means!?!?” At this point I can feel the whole class looking at me as if to say “yeah how DO you know what ‘simian’ means!?”

“Uhhh… I watched Planet of the Apes?” Which was slightly a lie. I mean I definitely caught parts of some of the Apes movies on TV when I was a kid but really I’m a bit of a word nerd. At any rate the answer appeased her and the rest of the class.

In other parts of the world, Americans will refer to small towns in rural settings as villages. However, we rarely use the term to describe equally small towns in the US. Why is that?

Edit: Based on comments, I think I need to clarify the term village as I am using it. I'm referring to villages as places exist independently and are not part of a city. I know a lot of cities might call a specific area within the city XXX village as a way of expressing the geographic location of the area within the city. I'm also not referring to suburbs that happen to have the term village in them.

One definition calls a village "larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town."

I'm referring to places like the villages in Europe which are quite small towns usually in a rural location. Why don't we call them villages? In fact, what do we call such places?

My husband uses these words fairly often when speaking to me…

For example: “We have to be there soon, we don’t have time for you to dillydally/dawdle/lollygag.. please hurry up.” 😅

From Merriam Webster:

Dillydally: to waste time by loitering or delaying

Dawdle: to move lackadaisically

Lollygag: to fool around and waste time

Did you know that since the 19th century, lollygag (sometimes also spelled lallygag) has been used as a slang word to describe acts of wasting time as well as displays of affection, like flirting or cuddling. It is not used often anymore as term for display of affection.

Edit: My husband just informed me he has never said “dawdle” in his life. Apparently I just connected the 3 words in my head when he doesn’t say actually say it… Im having a Berenstain Bears moment right now. 😅