A #puzzle.
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#WordPlay
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"Platty joobs", "genny lec", "menty b" & co.: I wrote about this British slang fad
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2026/02/10/dont-have-a-menty-b-about-this-bloggy-p/
#slang #language #words #phrases #hun #linguistics #wordplay
Don’t have a menty b about this bloggy p
An open linguistic question was raised recently on Bluesky by Darach Ó Séaghdha: What do we call those cutesie slang phrases that have become productive in the UK lately, like genny lec for ‘general election’ and menty b for ‘mental breakdown’?
In response I wrote a short thread, which I already disagree with. So I’ll pick up the discussion here on Sentence first, where there’s more room, it’s easier to find, and it’s probably less ephemeral than on social media.
We can show this linguistic fad as having two main stereotyped patterns or formulas, which overlap morphologically. For type 1, we take a word or short phrase, clip (i.e., truncate, abbreviate) the first stressed syllable, add a y-suffix, and reduce the next word or stressed syllable to its initial letter:
mental breakdown → menty b
nervous breakdown → nervy b
a hundred percent → hundy p
tomato ketchup → tommy k
sauvignon blanc → savvy b
ChatGPT → chatty g
lockdown → locky d
pandemic → panny d
Clapham Junction → Clappy J
For type 2, we clip the first stressed syllable, add a y-suffix (same as type 1 so far), clip the next word or stressed syllable, and, optionally, add an s-suffix:
general election → genny lec/lex
cost of living / cost-of-living crisis → cozzy/cozzie livs
platinum jubilee → platty jubes/joobs
king’s coronation → corrie nash
bank holiday → banny hols
state funeral → statey funes
You may not have seen or heard any of these. They’re still fairly restricted demographically, and are perhaps more spoken than written – and written only in very informal contexts – but if you search for them you’ll find examples.
I’m sure a linguist could formulate them better, but you get the idea. There’s minor variation, but there are clear core patterns. And a phrase can sometimes fit either type: panny dems and platty j also work and indeed are in use. How fun or satisfying they are to say is likely also a factor.
When a phrase can’t go either way, it may be because the result is semantically opaque or ambiguous, e.g., menty breaks suggests mental break(s) more than mental breakdown. Type 1s seem not to favour initial letters with zero onset (i.e., starting with a vowel sound): no cozzy ells or statey effs. But the sample size is small, so that may not hold up.
‘Have you heard the phrase “genny lec”?’ BBC vox pop, 2 July 2024
So what exactly is this phenomenon?
It’s slang and wordplay, for starters – but of a specific kind. The repeated formula (multiple clipping + y– or s-suffixation) made me wonder at first if it’s a snowclone – a kind of phrasal template that’s customizable for reuse (X is the new Y; X 2.0). But a snowclone needs to be a cliché first, and that’s not the case here.
The formula is productive, though – you can coin these phrases at will, as @matthewcba does in a TikTok video with the comically improbable mitty circs ‘mitigating circumstances’. (The video also includes simple clippings like Ab Fab and profesh.)
In the UK Independent in August 2024, Madeline Sherratt referred to the pattern as ‘cringe lingua’ and cited slang expert Tony Thorne’s belief that it
derives from the online “hun” generation – a subculture lampooned on Mumsnet that runs rampant with the frivolous and facetious use of “gorg” and “mwah” when typing furiously on WhatsApp – an etymological by-product of the “live, laugh, love” philosophy.
It extends to the humble “jackie p” (jacket potato) with a squirt of “tommy k” (tomato ketchup) on top – a money-saving meal when everything is so “spenny” (expensive) . . .
Such phrases are attributed to this broadly millennial subculture, which involves making silly jokes online. Those who subscribe to it, Thorne says, tend to be white, young, and upper-working-class to lower-middle-class women.
He said: “The online phrases such as ‘platty jubes’ and ‘savvy b’ mock the formal language that oppresses us, and we see this with young people when they move into the world of work and professionalism.”
Hun culture is something I was only marginally aware of. But I’m not surprised the fashion is driven by young women, given their place at the vanguard of so much linguistic innovation. The examples I’ve listed are all relatively new, as far as I know, but there are plenty of forerunners from various domains, including personal names.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was popularly known as Jackie O. Mickey D’s (Maccy D’s, etc.) for McDonald’s emerged in the 1970s as US Black and campus slang. An Aussie was reported on Bluesky to have called Christmas decorations ‘Chrissie Decs’ in the 1990s. Sunny Delight rebranded as SunnyD decades ago. Okey-doke has been dated to the 1930s. I’m sure you can think of others.
The recent wave of phrases are from a particular, interrelated set of sources, say the linguists who’ve researched them. Christian Ilbury confirmed to me that some are from or are associated with hun culture in the UK; his 2022 paper ‘U Ok Hun?: The digital commodification of white woman style’ includes examples of the type discussed here, including cocky t’s ‘cocktails’.
Pavel Iosad told me that his colleague Patrick Honeybone
has studied a version of pattern 2 in Liverpool (truncation + y-suffixation + some segmental effects, eg Sefton Park > Sevvy) and he dubbed it (Scouse) diddification, which I think is a glorious name that we should adopt.
Honeybone also refers to the process as ‘diddificating truncation’, alluding again to P. Diddy, and provides a one-page summary here. At first I thought another rapper, Cardi B, fitted the pattern, but that name is a reworking of Bacardi.
The UK may be the hotspot of this slang, but Australians, as we’ve seen, are also on board. They do love their clippings and hypocorisms. Cozzie livs was Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year in 2023, and I recently saw an Australian call the tennis player Elena Rybakina ‘Lenny Baks’, a great example that shows the name’s stress pattern.
Some people find these phrases twee, stupid, or insensitive. Even the Financial Times said that cozzie livs ‘only compounds the misery’ of the cost-of-living crisis. Some of the phrases may aim, in part, to make light of difficult or stressful subjects, to dull or reclaim their power. This is a specialty of slang. But they won’t win everyone over, and that, too, is as it should be.
In January 2023, Serena Smith’s ‘investy g’ for Dazed magazine tied them to a literary tradition of creative silliness, citing Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. Sincere use of these phrases ‘misses a crucial element’, she wrote; ‘the cringiness, the tackiness, the ridiculousness is part of the fun’.
I neither love nor loathe them. I’d never used them, even ironically, until this blog post, this bloggy p, but I find them interesting as wordplay. I’d love to hear ideas for what to call them, how else they might be categorized, or how they relate to patterns already formally described or informally conceived (e.g., as a subset of hun lingo).
Suggestions in the replies to Gretchen McCulloch’s post on Bluesky include childish abbreviations or chilly abs, nicky Ns or nicky ens (for ‘nicknames’), clippy comps, and extended hypocoristics. Of these I like Erik Wennstrom’s clippy comps best. A clipped compound could be psyops or sitcom, but clippy comps shows more precisely (because self-referentially) what it refers to. Clippy c’s could be used for type 1.
Another route is to use a popular or prototypical example to refer synecdochically to the set, much as Brianne Hughes uses cutthroats or cutthroat compounds as shorthand for agentive and instrumental exocentric verb-noun (V-N) compounds. This would give us menty b compounds, genny lec phrases, or some such term.
Don’t have a nervy b about it, but if the slang sticks around and there’s a good term for it, it might eventually end up in an esteemed dictionary like Merry Dubs or the Oxy D.
A viral tweet in January 2023 from Depop Drama, now DM Drama, that helped popularize “cozzie livs”.
#affixation #BritishSlang #clippings #cozzieLivs #etymology #gennyLec #gennyLex #humour #hun #hunCulture #hypocorisms #language #linguistics #mentyB #phrases #plattyJoobs #slang #wordplay
![Post on X by Kiell Smith-Bynoe, aka Chaos McBueno, @kfRedhot: 'I dunno about you man but i'm gassed for Lizzies Platty Joobs. I don't even know what it is but i'm READY. Might make some trainers on Nike ID [bullseye emoji].' This post is quote-tweeting the BBC News: 'Queen gets her own Barbie for Platinum Jubilee'.](https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/116/046/899/834/117/370/original/fd4d89784b931d70.jpg)
A little Dutch wordplay for the timeline. 🥚🦈
"Zieleroerei: Omdat een hardgekookt bestaan ook maar zo saai is." (Soul-scrambling: Because a hard-boiled existence is just so boring.)
Sometimes you just have to stir things up, even if you're surrounded by sharks.
A #rebus is a #wordplay #puzzle combining images and letters to represent a word or phrase.
Words are represented by combinations of pictures and letters; for instance, "apex" might be represented by a picture of an ape followed by a letter X.
Moving left to right "say" the images in English and mix in the letters to complete the answer.
Avoid the Alt Text (spoilers)
Embroidery #Wordplay is a #SundaySillies #wordsearch #puzzle with one answer. Start with one of the letters with a gray background and move to the next letter, but only horizontal or vertical from where you start. No diagonals - each square just once.
Use DM or CW for answers to let everyone enjoy the search!
Starting with one of the letters in a
gray square, find the longest word.
Next letter horizontal or vertical from
the first. No diagonals.
No square may be used again.
Minimum 7 letters
#SundaySillies
Wicked Wonderful Wordies - #wordplay #wordies #idiom
Happy weekend from here, #puzzle fans!
Idioms or common phrases (American/English) are represented by the position, shape or arrangement of words in or around the puzzle frame.
Can you figure out this week's wordie? It would be wicked wonderful if you can.
Please use CW to submit your answers, thanks. Give everybody the chance to guess.
Hint: NO
Created with the Free Software SVG editor #Inkscape
Confusing sentences:
[to a maths student] Can you please practice some additional subtraction?
[to a music history student] There was a key change in jazz at that time.
(Just found this in my drafts drawer, so I’m throwing it out there.)
People share 32 words they purposefully mispronounce to get a laugh out of others
EMBROILERY is a one-word word search puzzle.
There is just one "longest" word.
Shorter, included words are possible, but not the answer.
It is intended as a harder challenge than the similar "Embroidery" puzzle.
@autistics Heh... Discovered a new-to-me word today (I coined it, but it turns out to have already existed)... So relatable!!!
"The state of being so anxious that you become easily annoyed and cranky.
I was studying for law school finals, and I got so cranxious I totally blew up at my roommate for leaving the cheese out again."
by lovelyspam February 4, 2010
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