“Bro did you go to the concert on Saturday? It was lit af.” Most of the daily language of Hinsdale Central students is complete gibberish to teachers around the school. And, sometimes, even to students.

Honestly, I would be completely lost without Urban Dictionary. Seriously. I’m like an 80-year-old man trapped inside of a teenage girl’s body. When it comes to keeping up with trends, I’m always the one whipping out Urban Dictionary at the sight of any text from my friends.

Slang words have somehow wiggled their way into every teenager’s vocabulary. They’re like parasites, you don’t even know they’re there and BOOM, you’re telling your mom that the dinner she made was fire.

When you really look at them, slang words are so stupid. They don’t make sense, like how does someone decide to take fire, a natural disaster, and make it into a slang word used to describe a mixtape.

Some of these words replace the normal vocabulary of Hinsdale Central students. It’s like nobody can describe something as a word other than lit or on fleek. And nobody can address someone without calling them bro, dude, or fam. It’s an epidemic at Hinsdale Central.

Junior, Erin Otto, is no stranger to the popular slang at Hinsdale Central.

“I say the word gucci at least once in every conversation I have,” Otto said.

Sophomore, Abby Lee, is another student who frequents the use of slang in any situation.

“I say ratchet a lot, it just works in so many different situations,” Lee said.

The use of dictionaries doesn’t stop when we want to have a really complex word in our essay, now students are hitting Urban Dictionary to use the right slang word in a conversation. It’s hard to keep up with, but slang has become a necessary evil for Central students.