AMERICAN SLANG: CRISP, LIT, EPIC (2024)

So this is the summer of slang and today we’re getting down with crisp, lit, and epic. This video is going to be epic. I can’t wait for you to start using these words.

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So this is the summer of slang and today we’re getting down with crisp, lit, and epic! This video is going to be epic. I can’t wait for you to start using these words.

So this is the summer of slang in American English. If you’re not sure what slang is, watch the first video from the series where we go over the difference between slang and idioms.

Today we’re going to learn some positive slang. So be prepared to use these and feel good and make other people feel good.

First let’s talk about crisp. When I was planning this video, I posted on Facebook asking my friends and family what slang terms they’ve been hearing recently and my cousin, who works at a high school, mentioned ‘crisp’. Lots of slang that is current is happening in high schools so I went and looked up ‘crisp’ and I found a posting about it on urban dictionary from 2007, 10 years ago now. So sometimes a term will be used and then it’ll die for a couple years and then it’ll be revived again. Or sometimes a term will be developed, and then it takes a while to reach the US or a different region in the US. So my cousin, who is a math teacher, said she recently heard this term. One of her students said it after a very compelling solution to a math problem when it’s presented.. Crisp means cool, awesome, hot, amazing.

They forgot to charge me for my drinks. Crisp.
What are you doing tonight?
Going to a party in Beverly Hills.
Crisp.
What do you think of Emily’s new haircut?
Crisp.

This is a common word outside of its slang meaning. As an adjective it means, dry, brittle in a good way, the opposite of soggy. For example, crisp bacon, crisp lettuce. Yummy. As a noun, in American English it’s a baked desert, some sort of fruit with a crumble on top, like a blueberry crisp. In British English, it’s a potato chip.

Now, if you’re using it as slang, I’ve heard that an alternative pronunciation is ‘crasp’. Just more play. A play on pronunciation on top of the play of the slang meaning.

Lit. This word also means ‘amazing’, ‘excellent’. Full of energy.

The party last night was lit.

This is how it’s really being used a lot by the younger crowd at the moment. But it also has a different meaning, which has actually been around for a long time, and that is, drunk, intoxicated. Too much alcohol.

I’m ready to get lit tonight!!
He was so lit at the party.

So someone can be lit at a party, and the party can be lit.

Non-slang meaning: it’s the past tense of light: to brighten, illuminate.

What about ‘epic’? This is a much-used term, added as an adjective before anything, to mean ‘great’, ‘huge’, ‘awesome’, ‘the best!’

You really might hear it with anything. An epic movie, an epic sandwich, and epic sunset, and epic story or experience.

We drove south on the Pacific Coast Highway. It was epic.
A couple years ago, I took an epic road trip across America. Eight weeks on the road.
Remember mom’s 70’s outfit at her high school graduation? That was an epic outfit.

It can also be used with ‘fail’ to describe something that has gone very wrong: Well, this cake is an epic fail. I totally forgot about it and left it in the oven for two hours.

Crisp, Lit, Epic. Look, they all have the IH vowel. The KR cluster can be hard for some people, make sure your tongue tip isn’t touching anything, crrrr– crrrr–..

Lit. Now that’s going to be a Stop T. You don’t want to make that a True T, lit. Make it a stop T, lit–. Lit– where you stop the air. Go put your tongue into position. Lit. But then you don’t need to release it. That’s what Americans do. Lit. It was lit. He was lit.

Epic. First syllable stress. Eehhh– pic. Epic. So the second syllable will be low in pitch, flat, very quick. Pic, pic, pic, pic. Epic.

Be epic. Come up with a sentence with one of these terms and put it in the comments below.

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