There are certain words and colloquialisms I have come to accept. I stood by while the word “lol” infiltrated the Oxford English Dictionary and became a legitimate word. I accepted that “on point” has (for reasons I can’t quite comprehend) been replaced with “on fleek” and that sometimes, when complimenting my friends shoes, it’s appropriate to describe them as “hella” cute.
Based on your age (and let’s face it, Education level) you may or may not fully understand what half of this means and I suppose you don’t really need to. Though for the record, if someone tells you that “Jennifer” is “thirsty” that is not your cue to offer her a glass of water and FYI the word “basic” is basically an insult now.
The list goes on and on. Another year, another list of slang words which will probably be out of fashion faster than combat trousers and choker necklaces.
The world is forming full sentences with words which, I’m certain don’t really exist and I’m okay with that. That being said, as a lover of real words and a writer no less, I have to draw the line somewhere and I’m drawing it at “bae”.
What does bae even mean? Is it short for babe? Was the additional “b” secretly bothering everyone but me? Or perhaps the extra “b” is considered too time consuming. Though I would argue that if you can find the time in a day to flick your eye-liner and like Kylie Jenner’s latest Instagram picture, you have time to add the additional letter it takes to properly describe your boyfriend or girlfriend.
Some sources claim that “bae” stands for “before anyone else” which is marginally less irritating than a b-deficient-babe. That is until you realise how little sense that would make in a sentence. “I love my bae he’s hella cute” would roughly translate to “I love my before anyone else, he’s rather handsome” which makes about as much sense to me as a carb free diet.
Then there is the use of the word “bae” to describe inanimate objects “my bed is bae” “these cupcakes are bae” which leads me to believe there is no sentence which bae cannot be squeezed into and therefore probably no real escape from it. Bae is everything.
I had until recently made the assumption that “bae” is a term coined and predominantly used by Middle Schoolers and One Direction fans (who I can only assume use it to describe Harry Styles). A belief I held onto until the word began to infiltrate every one of my social media platforms and not sarcastically.
So it seems, much like the previously used “boo” the word bae is here to stay, if not in our actual day to day vocabulary, then most definitely in every song that is played in 20 years’ time when we ask the DJ for some “old school”.
Whilst that may not be of much comfort to those who can’t tolerate the word “bae” it’s best to remember that there was a time we thought “Fo shizzle” was here to stay, but thankfully it’s gone and we were non-the-worst for its short-lived appearance in our daily language.
I suppose when it comes to the word “bae” there are three types of people: the users, the non-users and the Danish, to whom the word means faeces (that’s poop to you and me).
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