What is a brat summer? Once you know, it's probably not cool anymore

You've probably heard it before. 

"No one says that anymore."

It can be a jarring realization, but also your own fault for using terms like cheugy and YOLO, which are long past their prime. The truth is, slang goes in and out of style, sometimes before people even know they are popular terms. And they can come from anywhere. 

"A lot of internet slang is, for example, African-American English," while other slang might come from the darker corners of the web, linguist Adam Aleksic told The Sunday Magazine host Piya Chattopadhyay. 

If anyone knows what words are hip and cool, it's Aleksic. He's a linguistics influencer based in Albany, N.Y., with millions of views on TikTok and Instagram.

New slang words can come from places such as popular albums, TikTok guidelines, and even incel groups. 

Tiktokers began using "unalived" to talk about someone who had died because the social media app restricted use of words like "kill" or "suicide." Now "unalive" is ubiquitous among young people.

"I've talked to middle school teachers, where the kids are submitting essays on Hamlet unaliving himself," said Aleksic.

And take a look at the suffix "-pilled." The term started as a popular meme from the 1999 movie The Matrix, when the main character Neo had to choose between a blue and red pill, which would shape the rest of his life. 

People subscribing to misogynist ideologies, including men's rights activists or incels (short for involuntary celibates), adopted the term "black pill", which meant you agreed with their ideology. Now, the term "pilled" has been taken in a new direction and has become mainstream to mean you like or support something.

"If I really liked eating burritos, and I just recently discovered that, I can say I'm