slay /sleɪ/: to impress someone very much or to be very good or impressive (Cambridge Dictionary, 2025); “slay the house boots down houston i’m deceased” (Urban Dictionary, 2022)
The middle-aged inspector took my ticket.
“Ta,” he said.
“Slay,” I responded.
He is confused. I am mortified.
This is a pandemic. I cannot stop. What started in group chats and comment sections is now being said to tutors and ticket inspectors. There is no herd immunity— the “slay” virus is spreading.
It seems to happen overnight: words enter our vocabulary and we’re not even sure how they got there.
Parents around the world just nod their heads, unsure, as “Tralalero Tralala” and “looksmaxxing” are discussed in the back seat of the car. But this is nothing new; 17 to 25-year-olds have always been the most innovative with language. At some point, your grandparents probably shook their heads at your parents discussing “wannabes” and “gnarly” things. However, things have changed since that prehistoric era. Languages have always evolved, but now internet-connected communities all around the world are making linguistic innovation easier than ever. New language is now constantly being created and shared at a frankly alarming rate.
But who was Slay’s ‘Patient 0’?
“Slay” is not a new word. Slaying dragons and enemies was all the rage in the Dungeons and Dragons era of history. But, as all languages do, it evolved.
In the twenties, the exclamation “You slay me!” meant someone had made you laugh very hard. It wasn’t until its adoption into ballroom culture in the 70s and 80s that slay gained its more familiar meaning. No, not the “samba and cha-cha” ballroom – the New York subculture of Black and Latinx drag queens ballroom— the very first to “slay”. Slay spread to a more general Queer culture through drag, getting a boost to worldwide fame through the televising of RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009), before appropriation by non-queer, non-black circles.
So slay was used by marginalised groups and is now spreading to a majority. It’s catchy, useful, and versatile… is this an issue?
Well, I think it depends.
We judge people by the way that they speak— their accent, their word choices, their inflections. This is true whether you like to admit it or not. If you are deemed to speak poor English, then you are disadvantaged because of it. Historically, “black speech has… been maligned as just a broken form of English, but this is as unfair as it is wrong.” So I think the question is, does the adoption of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) into Standard English reflect progress or not?
On one hand, this spread of language may be a sign of acceptance. Whenever language variations come into contact with each other, there is mutual change: words are borrowed, grammar is tweaked, and languages evolve.
This could be a great sign that AAVE is no longer being looked down upon, and is instead being celebrated and accepted, so much so that it grows beyond its original speech community. If you viewed your language as superior to another, you would surely not begin using the language you viewed as inferior. So, maybe this is evidence that AAVE is no longer viewed as inferior after all.
A complex social issue with an easy answer!
Unlikely.
Racism and judgement still run rampant through our countries and across our borders. If AAVE is still misjudged to be a lower form of English, continuing the oppression of a group, then the adoption of “slay” seems to be the height of hypocrisy. It’s making fun of someone for what they’re wearing and then buying the same shirt.
Language is identity. Its appropriation could erode the identity of a group when its use extends beyond the social circle.
So, the answer is perhaps not so clear-cut. There is likely truth in both responses. The prevalence of “slay” may signal both an acceptance of AAVE and an abuse of it.
What is clear is that there is no superior language and no superior dialect. Each language system is as complex as the next, and asserting otherwise reveals prejudices against groups that show that the hate of the language is symptomatic of a larger issue.
So, language is complex. Language is changing. Language has many contributors. What this investigation on “slay” has revealed is how language analysis can be an eye-opening tool for larger social issues, as it embodies so much of social change. The way we talk reflects so much about who we are and how we perceive the world that deep thought into its usage is bound to dredge up some truths.
I hope that the spread of this language signals an acceptance of all language varieties, but I fear there may be more to it, as false identities are tried on like costumes stitched together by words.
“Slay” is just one word, but it offers us an insight into a deeper change in language, and perhaps even our world.