Cheugy: the Gen Z word making waves online

Does language change how we see the world? Today, a new word invented by an American teenager is going viral on TikTok. But can “cheugy” really influence the way we think about others? At her high school in Los Angeles, Gaby Rasson was looking for a word that did not yet exist. Uncool did not feel right. Neither did basic, out of style or even embarrassing. “There was a missing word that was on the edge of my tongue and nothing to describe it and ‘cheugy’ came to me,” she remembers. For Gaby, cheugy meant people who were still wearing UGG boots and giant Gucci belts months or years after they went out of fashion. In other words - they were off trend. Gaby began using the term, and so did her friends. Cheugy spread from her high school to her summer camp to California’s university campuses. Then, one of Gaby’s acquaintances posted cheugy online. “OK TikTok, I have a new word for you that my friends and I use that you clearly are all in need of,” said Hallie Cain, a 24-year-old from LA. Overnight, the post attracted thousands of viewers. Now, cheugy is spreading around the world. Gaby and her friends insist the word is not an insult. “We didn’t intend it to be a mean thing,” says Abby Siegel. “It’s just a fun word.” Of course, Gaby is far from the first person to make up her own new word. In 1954, Birmingham University Professor Alan Ross published two lists of words in an obscure Finnish journal. He called the first list “U”, short for phrases used by the upper class. The second list of words were all “non-U”, or non-upper class. Two years later, Ross’s list suddenly gained a new audience, thanks not to TikTok, but the socialite Nancy Mitford. Overnight, everybody knew about U and non-U. Looking glass, chimneypiece and bike were all in vogue. Meanwhile, mirror, mantelpiece and cycle were definitely out of style. But are terms like U and cheugy more than just fun? Once you have heard about cheugy, will you start to see it everywhere you go and in everyone you meet? Some scientists believe the answer is yes. Incredibly, experiments have shown that the language a person speaks can even change how they see colours. For example, modern Greek has two different terms for light and dark blue - ghalazio and ble. But when a Greek person spends a significant amount of time in the UK, their brain starts to interpret ghalazio and ble as the same colour: blue. Similarly, an English person standing in the middle of the Arctic tundra would likely see one only thing: snow. Yet if you asked a Sami person to stand in exactly the same place, they might tell you they see vahca, skava or even ciegar. Moreover, campaigners believe that language can influence behaviour. Some say negative labels such as grey tsunami, used to describe an aging population, fuel discrimination and prejudice. “When we use the term grey tsunami, we’re training people to think about aging in a certain way,” says Andrea Charise, a scholar at the University of Toronto. “It helps create a narrative not just of decline, but of catastrophe around aging.” Does language change how we see the world? Word power Definitely, claim some. Language is an incredibly powerful tool - one that can shape the way we see and instill subtle habits upon our minds. The words we use influence our understanding of the society we live in. Hearing new terms like cheugy and grey tsunami for the first time forces people to contemplate social ideas, standards and norms they may never have previously considered. The opposite may be true, say others. Language does not change the way we think about the world; rather, we use and adapt words to describe what we are already seeing. People do not need to know the German word schadenfreude to feel pleasure at others’ misfortune. Likewise, you do not need to have to be familiar with cheugy to understand the phenomenon Gaby Rasson wanted to describe. KeywordsVogue - Fashion. A French word, it is also the title of the world's leading fashion magazine and a song by Madonna.