etymonline.com on "aura":
- 1870: In spiritualism, "subtle emanation around living beings".
- 1859: "Characteristic impression" made by a personality.
- 1732: "An aroma or subtle emanation".
The hyphenated term brain-rot was used by Henry Thoreau in Walden [1854]; search for it in this Project Gutenberg copy:
bitwize•6mo ago
Even in the realm of gen Z slang, gen Z/alpha people don't generally talk as obnoxiously as depicted in the Rizzler song or the infamous Walmart ad with the bus driver. And there are certain things attributed to gen Z that I think are completely made up and then picked up and propagated by gullible journalists and marketroids. A few years back, a number of online outlets began repeating the rise of the term "cheugy" among gen Z, meaning roughly "cheesy and outdated, like something a millennial would find cool". But I could never find actual live examples of "cheugy" being used this way, either online or IRL, outside of thinkpieces about gen Z slang. I'm pretty convinced that "cheugy" is a phenomenon similar to the hoax jargon of "grunge speak" of the 1990s:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak
I think it's important to separate and clarify the different linguistic phenomena going in here, to avoid brainrot regarding how Kids These Days speak and use language.
Swizec•6mo ago
Au contraire, I have heard a lot of millenials-who-spend-too-much-time-on-instagram use cheugy to describe a tacky outfit choice. But like ironically.
bitwize•6mo ago
soulofmischief•6mo ago