You’ll hear this word used a lot in teen movies, where it became increasingly popular in the 80s and 90s along with words like excellent, radical, and totally extreme. Nowadays it has been accepted into American and British English slang as a word that means excellent, exciting or remarkable. Originally this word meant to cause awe or terror, to inspire wonder or excitement. Here’s another word whose meaning has changed a great deal over the years. It’s a word that has intrigued linguists for decades, and even today articles appear trying to get to grips with all of the word’s meanings and its rich history. Today it has even more meanings – a person or thing that’s hip or trendy, to be aloof or stand-offish with someone, to be socially adept, to be highly skilled or clever. Similar words that were popular at the time, like groovy, rad or fly are no longer around in mainstream conversation in the same way, but for some reason cool survived.
Back then it meant a laid back style, or something that was great – even then the word cool was incredibly flexible, and had several meanings. The tenor saxophonist Lester Young is credited with making the word popular in jazz circles, and by the 1950s it was in wide circulation thanks to the success of jazz stars like Miles Davis and his Birth of the Cool. It’s said to have first appeared in 1930s America as a Black English slang word for fashionable. No word is more American than cool, and the word has come a long way.
Here we take a look at some of our favourite typical American words and explore their meanings.
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