The list of Toronto's top slang words may surprise you
What is widely considered to be the contemporary Toronto accent is often mimicked and mocked on social media, but a new study on slang in the city has illuminated that our most popular terms are surprisingly more Letterkenny and Trailer Park Boys than Drake.
The experts at language learning platform Preply took a deep dive into tweets across Canada last week, studying some 130,000 geotagged tweets to see what slang terms were the most prevalent, and where in the country.
This new Toronto slang generator is the ideal quarantine time waster https://t.co/AJzJOR8670 #Toronto #Slang #TorontoSlang
— blogTO (@blogTO) October 16, 2020
Sayings like "whose mans"," waste yute" and others that will forever be linked to the 6ix somehow didn't make the cut for our city; instead, T.O.'s favourite slang word was found to be "dart," with "mickey" and "baby girl" also well-utilized.
Coast-to-coast, stereotypically Canuck colloquialisms like hoser, Mountie, toboggan, toque, Timmies, double-double, loonies and toonies seem to reign supreme, along with short forms like klicks (instead of kilometres) and runners (instead of running shoes).
There are also the phrases beloved by Canadian dads everywhere, like hanging a larry or a roger (turning left or right) or calling someone a keener (overly eager or nerdy).
Romantic terms coined by Gen Z and the TikTok crowd were also found to be part of daily discussions on Canadian X (formerly Twitter), whether it's roster, bae, thirsty, sneaky link, hard launch, cuffing season, or rizz (in Ontario specifically, ick was the top used).
12 things you'll probably never hear someone from Toronto say https://t.co/zleuYfNWd4 #Toronto
— blogTO (@blogTO) September 12, 2022
And, along with mickeys, it seems that Canadians love their homegrown snacks, with words like poutine, Caesar, Beavertail, ketchup chips and Nanaimo bar among some of the more popular food and drink slang on the platform.
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