This year the youngsters were allowed to vote again. It had been criticized again and again that of all things the youth word of the year was determined by an adult jury from Langenscheidt Verlag - and this was often not able to reflect the actual word use of young people. This year fifteen to nineteen year olds submitted 20,000 words in a total of 1.2 million entries. The most frequent multiple answers made it into the top ten. Three words were mentioned most frequently: "Cringe", "sus" and "sheesh". With 42 percent, "cringe" was the winner. Last year, for the first time, the young people chose their own word of the year, a term that fits the pandemic year: “lost”, that is, lost, insecure, haphazard or clueless. The year before the vote was canceled,A German word was last chosen in 2018, namely "Ehrenmann / Ehrenfrau" - a person who stands up for others.

Cringe:

In English "to shudder", "to shrink back".

Transferred something like "being ashamed of others".

A variation on the adjective is "cringeworthy" when something seems ridiculous.

An example from Langenscheidt-Verlag: You could use the word to describe adults who try to speak youth language in order to appear cool.

"Cringe" is often commented on on the internet with ingratiating behavior or complacent images.

Sus

: This short form for "suspicious" ("suspicious", "suspicious", "suspicious") originated from the online game "Among Us" from 2018. It is a deduction game in which the players hide the traitors need to identify them.

Obviously, "sus" can be typed into the chat more quickly than stumbling over the vowel sequence over and over again.

Sheesh

:

Not

really a new word in American usage: The word was used as early as 1955, according to Merriam-Webster.

Actor Art Carney, however, sang the song "Sheesh, what a Grouch!" As early as 1954.

Then as now, "sheesh" is an expression of astonishment - negative as well as positive.

Translated something like: "My goodness", "oha" or "really".

It is not clear where the term comes from: it could be a modification of “Jeez” - that is, “Jesus”.

Wild / wyld

:

Same

meaning as in German.

In use, however, it means that something seems extraordinary, surprising, crazy or violent - outside of the norm.

Digga / Diggah:

Anyone who listens to German hip-hop from the nineties or comes from Hamburg will be familiar with this form of address.

Onomatopoeia for "fat", a close friend or buddy is meant, that is, someone with whom you are "thick friends".

More used for boys.

Accurate: Means

exactly what it means among young people: exactly, exactly, correctly.

It becomes a youth word because it is not actually used in colloquial language as an expression of consent, and therefore has a more ironic effect than “very precisely”.

Same

: A simple expression of empathy.

In German “equal”, this is how someone expresses having had the same experience, the same impression of something or the same attitude towards something.

In other words, roughly: I feel the same way.

Papatastic:

A word that fathers could be happy about - if it were made up of “Papa” and “fantastic”. However, it is not a familiar expression of joy - it refers to Kevin Teller, better known as "Papaplatte". The twenty-four year old is one of the most successful gamers on the Twitch platform, which broadcasts live games. With 1.5 million followers, his player name has already seeped into German usage - the youth word equivalent to "kafkaesk", so to speak.

Low Earners:

The only insult that made it into the top ten most popular words is "loser." Actually, it is meant as a joke: the entrepreneur and millionaire Robert Geiss is credited with using the term (almost euphemistically) when he talks about poorer people. This resulted in the meme "Out of the way, low-wage earners!" This means that young people also make fun of arrogant rich people - and of themselves.

Wednesday:

Certainly the most surprising word.

It goes back to a frog meme from 2014, titled with the simple sentence: "It is Wednesday, my dudes!", "It's Wednesday, my guys / friends!" one of the most popular memes.

Youtuber "Jimmy Here" (Tyler Collins) parodied the sentence with a loud scream and expressed what Wednesday means: a day of the agonizing realization of longing for the weekend on Wednesdays.