Excellent Slang Terms from the 1990s

110 percent

It was the amount you gave when you were giving your very best. Its logical impossibility made it the premise of a joke in a 1992 episode of The Simpsons. By 1998， it was still so popular that it landed on Lake Superior State University’s annual Banished Words List.

bada-bing

Spell it with one D or two， pair it with bada-boom， and… bada-bing bada boom… you have an unpretentious ’90s catchphrase， meaning “Voilà！” Though the Oxford English Dictionary （OED） notes that the term was used in 1965， eight of its 11 citations are from the ’90s， it was on the Banished Words List in 1994， and was the name of the gentlemen’s club in HBO’s The Sopranos， which debuted in 1999.

buzzkill

It wasn’t in the Scrabble dictionary until 2014， but according to Merriam-Webster， buzzkill—defined as “one that has a depressing or negative effect”—finds its first use in 1992， two years before the short-lived MTV prank show that bore its name.

harsh

When Tai declares that Cher is “a virgin who can’t drive” in Clueless， Cher shoots back， “That was way harsh， Tai.” The film is such a rich repository of ’90s lingo that it receives 74 citations in Green’s Dictionary of Slang， which defines harsh in this context as “very unpleasant， exceptionally rude， ill-mannered， extremely bad.”