Mastering American Slang

​Author: Ela Britchkow, Speech Therapist, Accent Reduction Specialist

"Adopt the pace of nature: Her secret is patience."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Slang is informal nonstandard speech made up of newly coined and rapidly changing words and phrases.

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​If English is not your first language, and someone said to you, “my coworker just gave me the cold shoulder so I don’t think I’ll hang out with him until he lightens up,” you might be wandering what he’s talking about. If your food is spicy and your American friend says “it’s too hot”, what is he talking about? Below are some typical American English Slang words and phrases that may help you understand the Americans you’re communicating with.

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1. Down to earth- Practicality and lack of pretense.
2. Drive up the wall-To irritate
3. The cold shoulder-Deliberately ignoring someone.
4. Hang out-To casually gather together or spend time with someone socially.
5. Knock-to speak negatively, to disparage, to badmouth
6. Lighten up-To relax
7. Sweet-Something that is good or nice
8. Tight- closeness between competitors or friends (for example: a tight competition; those two are tight)
9. Trash- Destruction (“He trashed the car.”)
10. Take a raincheck-Postponing or rescheduling a meeting between people to some later date that is more convenient. Reorder a product that isn’t available.
11. Shoot the breeze-killing time with idle chit-chat
12. All wet-completely wrong (Your ideas about politics are all wet.)
13. Hit-successful. Your proposal was a hit with the boss.
14. In-fashionable. The tie you are wearing is really fashionable.
15. Cool-good; this is a really cool place to work.
16. Dead-quiet; the club is really dead tonight.
17. John-bathroom
18. Ketchup-sauce
19. Pouring-raining
20. Hot-spicy

These are just a few expressions you might hear. If there are other expressions that you have heard that you would like to share with us, we would love to know about them.
Also, if you hear a slang word or idiom that you don’t understand, send that over to me, also and I’ll try to interpret it for you.

​Are you repeatedly asked, “What?” or “Can you say that again?”

• Quickly reduce infuriating requests, by pronouncing correctly one key misleading English sound.​

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By Ela Britchkow, Speech and Language Pathologist
©2017 Ela Britchkow