Silicon Valley teen slang

[Bob Fitzke]

Mike

Just remembered. TARFU: Things Are Really [Fouled] Up. SNAFU was the
nominative; TARFU was the comparative; FUBAR was the superlative.

Bob

Mike Salovesh wrote:

> 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 !!!