Silicon Valley teen slang

[Mike Salovesh]

Allan Metcalf forwarded an article on teenage slang by Rosemary Jacobs
from the San Jose Mercury News of Tuesday, May 11, 1999.  I'm glad he
prefaced the article with his comment, "FWIW. . . ."

Generally speaking, when a collection of teenage slang hits the
periodical press its definitions are dated.  By that time, teenagers
mostly use the words only for sarcastic effect, suggesting "this guy is
so far out of it he
still says 'X' where we say 'Y'. Just say u-huh and walk away."

Still, there's an interesting item in the list:

>     Jabroni (n) -- An idiot; a big-time loser.
>  That guy's a jabroni because he can never do anything right.

That's a word my father used (although he would have spelled it
differently); I'd date it to the 1930s at the latest.  His definition
and spelling would have been "A gibroni is some big, dumb buttinski
whose name I don't know."

I thought the word was just about extinct.  Does anybody have a sighting
on how this anachronism turns up in teenage slang today?

--  mike salovesh             <salovesh at niu.edu>        PEACE !!!