Ah, 2017. While we have bid adieu to you, we’re almost ready to excuse you for Trump taking over the White House, the countless nightclub shootings and tragic celebrity deaths. What you DID give us is one healthy reminder of why the internet is the best thing to happen since, frankly, television. Here are some of the best definitions one can find online for some of the highest trending words of 2017, a lexicon of ‘baes’ gone by:
- Woke
Essentially, the word means ‘to stay updated on current affairs and know what’s going on around the world’. However, given the trend of musicians preaching awareness and responsibility, one Twitter user described ‘woke’ as “Trash Katy Perry tweets about before being folded like dough”. Well, Bon Appetite to you!
- Savage
Now ‘savage’ is one of those words that was popular to begin with but just started surging this year. It typically means ‘incredibly awesome with zero care about what anyone else thinks’. This online slang dictionary took things to the extreme when it said “To be known in a popular way for beating the shit out of people or stealing, anything illegal and not caught”, indicating that not everyone gets over high school trauma.
- Low-Key
We all love a good comic book reference. We do, we really do. But sometimes it can be a little….challenging. ‘Low-key’ (at least to normal people) means ‘keeping something to the bare minimum and not letting many people know about it’, the new ‘down low’. One Urban Dictionary user just decided to play on what the word sounds like and wrote “Thor’s brother.” Low-key. Loki. Sure, they’re the same thing!
- Shade
Now ‘shade’ is another term that didn’t hit the stratosphere until 2017 rolled around. It traditionally means ‘dissing or disrespecting someone’. However, the internet was unaware of its apparent factual origins, as this Urban Dictionary user kindly familiarized us with. According to him, it also means “Insulting name for police in Limerick, Ireland”. The shade, the shade of it all.
- Covfefe
Come on, you knew this was coming. The highest searched and googled word this entire year, we all know the word was a type made by US President Donald Trump in one of his tweets where he meant to write ‘coverage’. One particular Urban Dictionary editor, however, ‘eloquently’ put “The mighty and terrible god of internet typos. The mysterious and all-knowing overlord of the Twitter trolls, and Pepe is his prophet. On this the 30th day of May, he was summoned by the orange king to begin his reign of terror over the lawless wasteland of cyberspace. And it shall be that no blogger, no profile, no Twitter egg shall know peace in the hereafter until they have bowed in reverence and fear at the glorious might of Covfefe.”…well said.
