Slang doesn't die so much as become uncool. The stage where it stops being a marker of being-in-the-know and starts being a marker of being-late is fast — usually 6 to 12 months between "everyone's saying it" and "your aunt is saying it on Facebook." The list below isn't a value judgment on the words themselves. It's just a forecast: these are the ones whose stage-3 ironic phase is winding down, and which we'd bet on being dated by mid-2027.
For the framework, see the lifecycle of a slang word.
The shortlist
1. mid
Peaked late 2023, saturated 2024, ironic-mockery 2025, brand-copy fodder by 2026. The signal that finished it: a major airline tweeted "anything but mid" in October 2025 about its boarding process. When an airline social-media manager owns the word earnestly, the original users have already moved on. Replacement candidate: NPC as a downgrade ("that's NPC behavior") and cheek in some UK youth corners.
2. slay
AAVE-rooted, peaked through stan culture in 2019–2021, mainstreamed by 2023. The kill-shot was the brand cycle — once Marriott and Crocs are running campaigns titled "Slay your stay," the original meaning of the word as a marker of Black queer celebration is gone. It'll persist as costume; it's done as currency. Replacement candidate: ate ("she ate that"), which was actually older than slay and is just now hitting general awareness.
3. rizz
Maximum saturation. Won Oxford Word of the Year 2023, named in news headlines through 2024–25, currently used by every brand mascot account on TikTok. Will continue as a normal English noun for charisma, but as slang— as a marker of in-group identity — it's done. Replacement candidate: none yet. There's no widely-adopted Gen Alpha word for the same concept that hasn't already been flattened. Watch for a streamer-coined term to emerge mid-2026.
4. delulu
K-pop fandom origin, broke through to the wider internet in 2023, peaked in early 2025 as a self-deprecating joke about romantic optimism. Already showing wear — increasingly used by people too old to be saying it credibly. By 2027 it'll be in the same drawer as FOMO and YOLO: technically still understood, audibly dated. Replacement candidate: the more-online clouded or aurapilled.
5. girl dinner
Quintessentially 2023–24. The TikTok original (a chaotic plate of cheese, crackers, and grapes) was charming; the brand-marketing aftermath was not. Restaurants put "girl dinner" specials on menus. By 2026, using it unironically signals that you absorbed the trend three layers downstream. Replacement candidate:the format itself stays — small-plate-confessional content — but the name will rotate.
6. looksmaxxing (general use)
Coined in fitness/masculinity-internet subforums, broke into the mainstream via TikTok mewing content in 2024, currently used loosely by everyone to mean "trying to look better." The original specific meaning — a regimen framework with terms like jawmaxxing, mewing, looksmaxxxer as identity — will probably survive in its origin community. The mainstream-flattened sense is going to feel dated fast. Replacement: none direct; the general "self-improvement aesthetic" frame moves to the next subculture.
7. Roman Empire (the format)
2023's "how often do you think about the Roman Empire?" was a perfect format for about 8 weeks. By the time it was a Cosmopolitan listicle, it was over. Persists as shorthand for "an obsession you can't explain," but the meme format itself is fully retired. We're including it because half the dictionaries are still indexing it like it's active.
8. brat summer
Charli XCX's brat dominated Summer 2024. The album is genuinely good and the aesthetic has staying power in fashion; the phrase "brat summer" is dated the way "hot girl summer" is dated. Replacement candidate: nothing yet has the same monocultural moment. Maybe nothing will until the next album cycle produces a comparable hook.
9. cringe (as evaluative shorthand)
Still in heavy use, but rapidly losing its edge. Gen Alpha increasingly uses Ohio and NPC as functional replacements with sharper specific meanings. Cringe has been around long enough that even millennials are saying it; that's the universal kiss of death.
10. main character / main character energy
Born on Twitter circa 2019, mainstreamed by TikTok 2021, brand-saturated by 2023. Will survive as a stock cultural reference but is functionally done as a "hot phrase." Replacement candidate: NPC on the opposite axis is doing a lot of the heavy lifting now.
Words we thought would die but didn't
For balance — we predicted these were on the way out in 2024, but they're still going strong:
- vibe — too useful to die. Has gone from slang to permanent English.
- lowkey / highkey — settled into normal vocabulary; survive without their original cool factor.
- sus — kept alive by gaming culture and Among Us nostalgia.
- bussin' — held on because it fills a real semantic gap (food praise) that English didn't have.
Words probably surviving past 2027
Bets on what's likely to graduate from slang to permanent English:
- situationship — the concept didn't have a word before; now it does.
- vibe coding — captures a real shift in software development; the term will stick even if the practice changes.
- unalive — algospeak that's become normal verb usage among under-25s. Likely permanent.
- doomscrolling — predates social media slang as a concept but the word is now stable.
How we made this list
Three signals are reliable indicators a word is on its way out:
- Brand adoption — when the airline / fast-food chain / banking app uses it earnestly.
- Generational lag — when it shows up in a press release or your aunt's Facebook post.
- Replacement pressure — when there's a younger word doing similar work better.
All ten on the list above show at least two of these. We'll revisit in 12 months.
For the longer view: where slang is born now covers the upstream side of the same pipeline — what's currently being minted that'll be on this list in 2029.