What are kids saying? Here is your guide to Gen Alpha slang - explainer

Much has been written about the generational conflict between Millennials and Baby Boomers and the rise of Generation Z into prominence, but the next generation has been quietly building up momentum behind the scenes. Now, that buildup has exploded into a major force in pop culture and public discourse. 

There's no denying it anymore - Gen Alpha is here, and the future belongs to those children of the 2010s. And with every new generation comes the inevitable influx of new slang, humor, and culture. 

So whether you're a Millennial or Gen Xer who's just been getting used to Gen Z slang and now have an entire new generational cohort to understand, or a parent trying to figure out what on Earth your child and their friends are saying, this guide has something for everyone.

These words originate from various sources, such as pseudoscience, slang from minority communities, the far Right, and streamer Kai Cenat. Credit has also been given to the song "Sticking Out Your Gyat for the Rizzler," a popular TikTok song parodying "ecstasy" by SUICIDAL-IDOL that helped spread the prominence of many of these slang terms.

Keep in mind that these words are not exclusive to Gen Alpha. Others originated among other cohorts, and many of them also see use among members of Gen Z and even some Millennials. 

Here are a list of some of the most well-known Gen Alpha slang words. 

Rizz

The word rizz has a very simple origin: it's short for charisma. In practice, it has been used to mean someone has a lot of charm. Modified forms of the term rizz included "to rizz up," meaning seduce or charm someone actively. 

Someone having rizz can be understood as being a new way of saying someone "has a game," to use a term used by previous generations. 

Like many slang terms that become part of popular discourse, rizz has its origins in minority community slang, in this case, specifically among people of color in the US.

However, it became thrust into everyday slang use after being popularized by the popular Twitch streamer Kai Cenat - a name that will appear multiple times throughout this article, as the impact he has had on Gen Alpha slang cannot be overlooked.

Gyat

Another slang term with origins among people of color in the US, and once again also popularized by Kai Cenat. However, this word's meaning has actually changed overtime. 

Gyat, also spelled as gyatt or even gyattt, is an evolution of the term "goddamn" and was originally nothing more than an exclamation. This is actually how Cenat would use it too. But things changed overtime, as it became a term of exclamation specifically for seeing an attractive person, usually a woman perceived as having an above-average-sized posterior - that is to say, a large butt. 

This meaning has become so widespread that some people have retroactively turned gyat into an acronym, standing for "Girl, Your Ass Is Thick," among other things. 

Sigma

This term follows another trend of Gen Alpha slang words of having a peculiar origin. While historically, a large amount of slang terms come from pop culture phenomenon or from minority communities, sigma, as well as many other Gen Alpha slang terms, actually came from the far Right. 

Many sources attribute its first usage to Vox Day, a far-right white supremacist activist and science fiction writer. 

The term itself is meant to be a counterpart to alpha and beta males, with the former meaning a dominant male and the latter meaning a submissive male. Both of those terms are derived from the idea of alpha and beta animals, which is a part of animal mating and pack structure. Sigma males are meant to be above all that. They are introverted, not interested in sex with women and instead focused on themselves, which comes with them often being seen as aloof and not able to be manipulated. 

The term began being used to describe characters in fiction who fit the mold of the ideal sigma male. However, it has since grown far beyond its origins on the far right and has since entered popular usage on the Internet. 

Looksmaxx

This is another term that has its origins on fringe elements of the far Right, specifically on incel message boards. The term itself is meant to refer to ways of maximizing one's physical appearance to appear as attractive as possible. However, it has historically been associated with problematic and widely scientifically unsupported practices to modify one's own appearance. 

Some looksmaxx practices are rather harmless though, focusing on keeping proper hygiene, hairstyling, fashion, exercise, and more. However, there lies a more controversial side to this term, with more extreme methods that can have permanent ramifications, such as surgery or starvation. 

However, as is often the case with slang, the term may begin to grow beyond its origins and see more widespread use unrelated to the incel community. 

Mewing

Mewing is also related to the aforementioned looksmaxxing but its origins are far more specific. The term refers to an oral posture training method that has been named after its creators, Mike and John Mew, two British orthodontists. 

The technique itself, part of a practice dubbed orthotropics, sees one pushing their tongue against the roof of their mouth and applying further pressure. The idea behind this is t hat it should help change one's jaw structure. However, this method has been highly criticized by most experts due to lacking any scientific backing. 

It has since risen to prominence on social media and is often linked to looksmaxxing.

Mogging

Mogging is another term related to looksmaxing. The term itself is often used to imply a position of superiority and dominance over another on the basis of physical appearance. 

Fanum tax

This is yet another slang term with its origins in Kai Cenat, though this time more specifically from Cenat's frequent collaborator Fanum. 

Fanum, a member of Cenat's AMP influencer group, has a running joke among the fandom where he would take some of his friends' food as a "tax." 

And thus, the term Fanum tax was born. To put it simply, it means sharing food with friends by getting a piece of it. 

In an interview with the outlet Wired, Fanum himself actually described the phrase Fanum tax.

"Let's say your friend having a meal, he's having a good meal, and you just want a piece of that meal. Like, you know what I'm saying? You need a share. That's your friend and the friend's share, right? Get you a little piece of the meal. It's the Fanum tax. You just go ahead and just like, lemme get a little bit of 5%, 10% of the meal, maybe 20%."

Ohio

This may be one of the most bizarre slang terms to have come out of Gen Alpha.

Ohio just means something is weird, strange, bizarre, or stupid. It can either be made in reference to the specific state, Ohio, or the word can be turned into an adjective or adverb. 

The term's origins are derived from an older meme, known as "Only in Ohio," which would list strange situations or images captioned by some variation of the phrase "Only in Ohio." That meme was created following a viral Tumblr post in 2016 of a broken bus stop sign that said "Ohio will be eliminated," which ended up kicking off the Ohio trend. 

The "Only in Ohio" meme was significant in starting a cultural shift, with Ohio rapidly taking the role of "The American joke state" from Florida. Its popularity was so considerable though that it caused Ohio to take on a new role as a descriptor. 

Edge, goon, and jelq

These terms stand out for having extremely sexual origins. 

Gooning is a well-known term in certain sexual subcultures, specifically being a verb and a noun for chronic masturbation. This is related to edging, which is the process of masturbating for an extended period of time without achieving orgasm. Both terms have become linked to other Gen Alpha phrases online, such as sigma, and can be seen in a plethora of different memes. 

Jelq is something different, and it is one that has seen a lot more serious attention from health experts. 

To put it simply, it is an attempt at penis enlargement. To put it more graphically, it involves pulling and stretching one's penis to stretch tissue. Supposedly, this works by creating microtears in the tissue to make it larger when it heals, similar to how muscles tear when lifting weights and grow after healing. 

Experts are divided on the efficacy of jelqing, though the divide is not between "it works" and "it doesn't work" but rather "it doesn't work" and "maybe it has an extremely minor effect?" 

However, it does work when it comes to people suffering from a condition called Peyronie's disease, where forms of penile stretching are found by some to actually have some effectiveness as a therapeutic treatment. 

But jelqing also has significant risks, including erectile dysfunction and creating scar tissue that could end up leading to Peyronie's disease.

In terms of slang, jelqing is associated less with sigma and far more with looksmaxxing, where it has become one of the many espoused techniques. 

Roman Empire

This is a fun one. The Roman Empire has become a catchall term for something people think about a lot, whether it is an event, person, incident, or anything else. 

The term itself is derived from a post by Instagram influencer Saskia Cort, where she challenged her followers to ask men how often they think about the Roman Empire. This in turn led to a slew of memes surrounding how men think about the Roman Empire extremely often.

The fact that men think about the Roman Empire is nothing new - it has been a trend throughout history since Rome fell, in fact. But regardless, this led to people using it as a way of describing the extent to which they think about something frequently. For example, if you think about X all the time, then X is your Roman Empire. 

Livvy Dunne and Baby Gronk

These slang terms are inextricably linked together. Livvy Dunne is a term that, originally, referred to Olivia Dunne, an American gymnast and social media influencer. Baby Gronk is an 11-year-old social media influencer and youth footbal player, whose real name is Madden San Miguel. His nickname is itself a reference to Gronk, a nickname for NFL player Ron Gronkowski. 

The two of them developed social media followings in their own right and collaborated in 2023, with a Baby Gronk video uploaded by his parents on YouTube titled "LIVVY DUNNE KNOWS I GOT RIZZ." The video sparked controversy, however, with many claiming Baby Gronk was sexualized in the video. 

But regardless, the two of them, both who were already famous online beforehand, only continued to grow in prominence over the following months, and both of their names have seen use in a variety of contexts in reference to themselves. 

Skibidi

Yes, it's the one you've all been waiting for. 

Skibidi is easily the most famous, or infamous, slang term to come out of Gen Alpha. It was first used in the eponymous song "Skibidi" by Russian music group Little Big in 2018, which subsequently spawned the Skibidi Challenge on social media which called on people to share their own dances to the song. 

"Skibidi" became a hit song, particularly in Russia. However, the term's use was cemented in pop culture in 2023 with the creation of the extremely popular YouTube series Skibidi Toilet. A mashup with the song became the main theme song of the antagonistic force in the series, the titular Skibidi Toilets, which helped lead to the name, 

Skibidi Toilet has become a smash hit in pop culture and was seen by some commenters as the first sign of Gen Alpha's Internet culture emerging. 

The series was developed by Alexey Gerasimov of the Republic of Georgia and it has since spawned some 24 seasons. The show is incredibly bizarre, lacking spoken dialogue, and featuring a war between the Skibidi Toilets - which are essentially toilets with human heads - against humans with cameras, speakers, and televisions for heads.

However, the term skibidi in slang does not mean an inherent reference to either the song or the web series. Rather, it has taken the role of a nonce word - a word or sound that does not have a specific meaning per se, but rather were made for a specific occasion or sentence. 

In practice, skibidi is often used as a modifier meant to indicate comedic or exaggerated effect. Sometimes it just serves as a filler word. Most commonly, however, it is meant to mean that something is of poor quality. 

So this has been your go-to guide for Gen Alpha slang. But just knowing what these words mean doesn't mean you necessarily know how to use them. Used improperly, they can very easily give the impression that someone is attempting to talk to kids in their language, which ends off coming across as cringe. 

To use a reference from previous generation, it's giving "how do you do, fellow kids" energy.