Gen Alpha — children born from roughly 2010 onward — is the first generation to grow up entirely on tablets, with TikTok and YouTube Shorts as their primary cultural inputs. Their slang reflects that. It's faster, more algorithm-shaped, and more meta than anything that came before. A nine-year-old in 2026 will fluently use words that were minted on a single Twitch stream eight months ago and call you cringe for not knowing them.
This guide walks through the most common Gen Alpha terms, where they came from, and how they actually get used. If you're a parent, teacher, or older sibling pretending to follow along, this is your map.
The core lexicon
Skibidi
From the YouTube series Skibidi Toilet, a surreal, low-budget animation about disembodied heads in toilets fighting humanoid surveillance cameras. "Skibidi" started as the show's nonsense theme song lyric and spread to mean anything chaotic, weird, or bad — though kids increasingly use it as a generic intensifier. "That's skibidi" can mean "that's weird," "that's cool," or "that's bad," depending on tone. It's slang's pure form: a sound that means whatever the speaker wants it to mean.
Sigma
Originally a term from a fringe corner of online masculinity culture (the "sigma male" archetype — the lone-wolf alpha who doesn't follow social rules), Gen Alpha hollowed it out and turned it into a generic compliment. A sigma is now anyone admirably unbothered, confident, or cool. Calling someone "sigma" carries roughly the social weight of saying they're cool. The original ideology has been almost entirely stripped out.
Read more: sigma.
Fanum tax
Coined by Twitch streamer Fanum, who is part of the Kai Cenat–led "Amp" streaming collective. Fanum had a recurring bit where he'd take ("tax") food off his friends' plates mid-stream. Gen Alpha picked up the phrase and now uses it any time someone takes a bit of someone else's food. "Stop fanum-taxing my fries."
Rizz
Short for "charisma" — specifically, the kind of charisma that helps you flirt successfully. The word was coined by streamer Kai Cenat around 2021 and broke into the mainstream in 2023, when it became Oxford's word of the year. Someone with "rizz" can talk to a stranger and end the conversation with their number. Someone with "no rizz" cannot. It's used in noun, verb, and adjective forms — you can have rizz, you can rizz someone up, and a good outfit can be rizzy.
Read more: rizz.
Gyatt
An exclamation, originally a stylized version of "goddamn," used as a reaction to seeing an attractive figure — especially curves. Popularized by streamers and lip-sync TikToks. Used to be considered borderline crude; now teachers report hearing it in elementary school classrooms, which has triggered a small moral panic and several viral op-eds.
Ohio
Used to describe anything weird, cursed, or off-putting. "That's so Ohio" started as a meme about strange news stories from the state and evolved into a general-purpose adjective for surreal vibes. Has nothing to do with the actual state of Ohio at this point — it's slang the way "Chicago" is slang for nothing.
Bussin'
Means delicious, especially food. "These nuggets are bussin'." Comes from AAVE (African American Vernacular English) where "bussin'" has a longer history meaning "exceptional." TikTok food creators flattened it into the modern usage. See also: the broader role AAVE plays in internet slang.
Mid
Mediocre. The internet's preferred way to say "average" with disdain. "That movie was mid" lands harder than "that movie was okay" because it implies a deliberate downgrade. Gen Alpha uses it constantly and merrily.
Baby gronk / Livvy Dunne / Drake
Less words, more memes-turned-references. Baby Gronk (Madden San Miguel) is a child football prodigy whose viral content — including a video where he claimed to be "rizzing up Livvy Dunne," a college gymnast — became a sort of cultural shorthand for absurd Gen Alpha rizz aspiration. These names stop meaning the people and start meaning the memes.
How Gen Alpha slang differs from Gen Z slang
Gen Z slang (built around words like vibes, slay, no cap, bet, finna) is largely AAVE-derived, Twitter-shaped, and more grammatically flexible. Gen Alpha slang is more violently algorithmic — it's words and phrases minted on a single stream or YouTube Short and absorbed by millions of ten-year-olds within a week.
Three structural differences:
- Source compression. Gen Z slang spread through Twitter, Tumblr, and Vine over months. Gen Alpha slang spreads through TikTok and Shorts in days, often from a single creator.
- Meta-awareness. Gen Alpha kids know their slang is going to age badly and lean into it. They use words ironically while still meaning them.
- Nonsense-tolerance. Skibidi, gyatt, and Ohio aren't really words in any traditional sense — they have a sound or a vibe, and that's enough.
We have a longer breakdown in Gen Z vs Gen Alpha slang: how it shifted in 18 months.
Why parents and teachers find this so disorienting
Two reasons. First, the velocity. By the time a parent learns what "rizz" means, their kid has stopped saying it unironically and moved on. Second, the meta layer. When a 10-year-old yells "skibidi sigma," they may genuinely mean "cool"; they may be quoting a friend; they may be deploying it ironically because they know it's cringe; they may not even be sure themselves. Slang has always done this — but Gen Alpha slang does it at speed.
The good news: you don't actually need to keep up. Slang you learn at 35 lands wrong anyway. The better move is to treat it like any other dialect — listen, get the gist, ask follow-ups, and let your kid teach you the rules. They love nothing more than catching an adult misuse it.
What's coming next
Half the words in this article will be dead by the time today's nine-year-olds are fifteen. That's the deal with slang. New ones are minted weekly — keep an eye on the trending page and the Gen Z category for whatever Gen Alpha is currently absorbing from older siblings.
For the longer view, see the lifecycle of a slang word — every one of these terms is on the same arc, just at different points along it.