NEW YORK, Feb 6: From “mewing” and “slaying” to “sigma” and “rizz,” the lingo of Gen Alpha is baffling parents more than ever before.

“When we had slang, there were only a few phrases that we had to keep up with, and you could kind of guess what they meant,” said Dallas stay-at-home mom Jen Kim, 38, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “This is a whole vocabulary that we’re trying to decode.”

Kim shared an eye-opening experience with her trendy 10-year-old niece, Avery, who described a gift of colored pencils as “slay”—a term Kim correctly deduced meant “good.” However, Kim was taken aback when her husband claimed to have “rizz,” meaning charisma, and was met with an unimpressed look from Avery. “She gave him a look, like, ‘No, you have no rizz,’ and started putting him down with all of her insults she knew in her toolbox,” Kim recalled. Avery went on to call her husband “omega,” which, according to the tween, refers to someone being “the lowest rate you can get.”

As a result, Kim found herself labeled as “beta,” a tier below “alpha.” “Because I married him, that brought my stock down,” she said.

Philip Lindsay, a middle school educator, revealed that in just a single week in his classroom, more than two dozen slang terms make their way into conversation. Among them are “sigma” (cool), “gyat” (used to express surprise when seeing someone attractive), and “skibidi” (a reference to a viral YouTube video that can mean either good or bad, depending on the context).

The Journal also spotlighted “gigachad,” a term used to describe an individual who is “exceptionally masculine, physically attractive, and muscular,” often idealized as an exaggerated version of a “chad,” who represents a stereotypically confident and handsome man. Think: Greek god material.

Many of these terms have roots in diverse cultural backgrounds, especially African-American and LGBTQ+ communities, as experts explained to The Journal. However, the rise of these phrases has left parents scrambling to keep up, resorting to online searches to decode terms like “mewing,” a word that left Boston mom Cecilia Hermawan, 41, puzzled. “I didn’t know what it meant so I had to Google it, and I had to ask my friend Emily to reference check,” she said. It turns out, “mewing” is an exercise designed “to enhance your jawline.”

Matt Murray, a father who uses Reddit as his go-to source for understanding his teen son’s lingo, has gotten a handle on many of the terms, like “sus” (suspicious). However, one word continues to stump him: “skibidi.” Despite his best efforts, Murray, 51, who works in strategy for a San Francisco software company, admitted that the task of keeping up with the slang has become a bit much. “It’s kind of like a foreign language,” he said. “I can understand hearing it better than I can speak it.”

As soon as parents master one term, it can become outdated. Startup founder Carleen Haylett shared that “bruh” was “so September 2024’ish” in her home. Now, her 13-year-old son Fletcher has moved on to another 50-plus slang terms that he prefers. At this point, Haylett doesn’t even try to keep up. “When Fletcher games on the computer, I put my AirPods in with the noise-canceling so I don’t have to listen to it,” said Haylett, who lives in Costa Rica.

It’s enough to make anyone feel their age—or even older.

Retired divorce attorney Sharon Blanchet, 78, recently had to ask her 17-year-old granddaughter about the meaning of “homie hopping.” The San Diego resident learned it refers to when an ex-boyfriend starts dating one of your friends after a breakup. “Boy, do I feel old,” she quipped.