guilty pleasure

A guilty pleasure is something you enjoy but feel slightly embarrassed about, usually entertainment or food. Standard English. Not concerning, just useful self-aware vocabulary. If your kid uses it constantly, ask them where they first heard it, not to police their speech but to understand which online community they are in. Most slang of this kind moves through TikTok and group chats, so seeing it in your child's vocabulary just means they are plugged into normal teen internet culture.

Guilty pleasure is a standard English noun phrase meaning an enjoyed thing one feels slight shame about. Safe in casual and journalistic writing. Formal equivalent: "an indulgence," "a furtive enjoyment." Common non-native mistake: using it for serious moral lapses; the phrase implies minor, low-stakes indulgence, never actual wrongdoing. Pair freely with food, music, TV shows, and other entertainment. Read or listen to the word in context several times before trying it yourself; the right register is harder to learn than the dictionary meaning.