Given the generation I come from, I’m not unnaturally a little obsessed with using idiomatically correct English. But I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that it’s much more fun to delve into a dictionary that is bombarded everyday with more interesting vocabulary than it knows how to deal with.  
My contemporaries are no strangers to slang- after all we too had our foray into enriching the oxford dictionary. We were the eighties hipsters, who grooved at discos (is there anything like a disco anymore? Everyone seems to go clubbing instead!) with guys we called far out, dreamy and hunky. And when the going got rough, we could always take a chill pill.  We were the cool dudes and dudettes; would we be seen dead with a dork? As if!
It doesn’t come as that much of a surprise that young people today are exponentially more creative than my generation in creating tantalizingly incomprehensible slang and coining new words out of nothing. As parents of grown kids, it’s inevitable that one gets dragged into the sticky sea of unintelligible acronyms, especially if you want to understand what’s happening online these days (I have two deliciously uninitiated friends who believed, till recently, that LOL meant Love You Loads). But if you think that by knowing acronyms like FOMO, YOLO, BFF, NBF,TTYL AND ROTFL you’re in the game, forget it… that’s so last year, dude. You need to savvy up on trending hashtalk, and remain on fleek if you want to be part of the squad.
Take the simple case of determining your sexuality. There was a time when you were either heterosexual or homosexual. Perhaps, if you were adventurous, you would be bisexual. Or if you weren’t that lucky, just asexual. In today’s virtual smorgasbord, you have an infinitely more intriguing playing field. Take your pick from pansexual, polysexual, omnisexual, narcisexual. If you don’t fancy those, my new discoveries are sapiosexual and insipiosexual. Apart from your actual sexuality, your look and personality can also be described, - how do you feel about metrosexual?  But that’s old hat - if you’re more with it, there’s always lumbersexual!
Language by its very nature stems from the culture it develops in, and culture all over the globe is becoming homogenised rapidly. The ubiquitous jean clad slang spouting twenty-something has been around for a while now in almost every corner of the globe, but is now seamlessly cyber-unified with his or her peers through the far reaching tentacles of the World Wide Web. Here are a few of my favourite new entries into the new words space, trending online in 2015… maybe some of them have yet to make their way to Indian shores, but they will soon, fo shiz, dude.
Turnt UpInspired by a song called So Turnt Up by Wiz Khalifa and Juicy J, this coined phrase implies going crazy at a party or a club, generally under an extremely deep influence of alcohol. “I’m totes getting turnt up tonight at Tryst!”
FleekThis one was originally used by a girl who uploaded a Vine video stating that her eyebrow were on fleek. And just like that, a word was born!  Basically, something being on fleek means that it is on point, or looking perfect. “Damn that girl, how does she manage to always be on fleek?”
BAEI have it on the authority of the World Wide Web that the most trending slang word of the year is bae, which is an affectionate form of babe but mainly it’s an acronym for before anyone else. “Shahrukh’s totally my bae, Salman doesn’t stand a chance!”
ThirstyNo, it’s doesn’t have anything to do with a chilled beer, or any beverage at all. It refers to someone’s desperation, or over-eagerness. “Babe, she called me four times to have lunch with her, how thirsty can she get!”
YaassssHilarious. Apparently, an alternative way to say “yes” with aggravated gusto. Use it to put your full weight behind something or someone, and clap loudly for emphasis!
Norm CoreI love this one, and learned it from a trendy young woman in the fashion space. It combines normaland hardcore in reference to a unisex fashion trend, characterized by unpretentious, average-looking clothing which is really anti-fashion, and describes classic, normal clothing as an antidote to hipster chic. Normcore dressers are, in a nutshell, fashionably unfashionable.
WCW NOT World Championship Wrestling! This is far cooler- it stands for womancrushwednesday… bully for woman power!  Both male and female Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr users are part of this weekly trend, obviously peaking on Wednesdays. You share a picture of your favourite woman crush. It could be a celebrity, an icon, a love interest or a BFF. Sweet. A neat way of acknowledging the women in your life! Having said that, there’s also something called mancrushmonday- go figure!
FungryTotes simple, bro. It just means that you’re F***ing Hungry!
LumbersexualForget about being metrosexual, this guy has much more swagg. Coined by GearJunkie.com, a lumbersexual is a man who looks like he belongs in a log cabin in the woods, but is in fact a city animal with an enviable income. You think his backpack carries a lumberjack’s axe, but it actually contains a MacBook Air. He looks like the rugged, outdoorsy type, but is dressed with style, grooming and care. Think checked shirts and sleek leather jackets. Basically, a well-dressed man with a fabulous, well-trimmed beard. Ben Affleck, anyone?
SapiosexualSomeone who thinks that intelligence is the most sexually attractive feature. Someone who wants analytical discussion as foreplay. In a nutshell, aroused by intelligence. Consider yourself a sapiosexual if you prefer Arundhati Roy to Katrina Kaif!
InsipiosexualQuite the opposite of the above; someone attracted primarily to fools. Srlsy!
With all this and more jostling for space on a plethora social media platforms, how do you know what’s in and what’s not? Trending hashtags, of course!  It doesn’t take much ingenuity to guess that #lovewins is pretty much on top right now, along with winners like #wowfacta, #singlebecause #selfie and #followme. All those out there with their very latest phones, phablets and tablets will know that words like photobomb, derp, sext and noob originated on the internet and created enough impact (meaning they went absolutely cray cray) to end up in the Oxford dictionary. It’s a good thing it’s available online, or they would be re-printing that dictionary faster than you could say OMG!