[Ads-l] Based and cringe

[Geoffrey Nathan]

Two adjectives that have become very widespread in the past six to eight months are ‘based’ and ‘cringe’, which seem to be antonyms.
‘Based’ means something like ‘I approve of this person’s opinions—they’re right’, while ‘cringe’ means the same person or idea is just so wrong it makes you cringe.
I’ve seen polls with some opinion expressed and a multiple choice answer block that has two answers: ‘based’ and ‘cringe’. I have not seen this discussed here but it’s very common on FB pages I read.

Some people seem to think it comes from a

rapper Lil B dubbing himself "Lil B the Based God" and 4chan users referring to things as "based and redpilled."

Thoughts?

Geoff

Geoffrey S. Nathan
WSU Information Privacy Officer (Retired)
Emeritus Professor, Linguistics Program
https://clasprofiles.wayne.edu/profile/an6993
geoffnathan at wayne.edu


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