![]() ![]() I don’t announce it, and I don’t like to celebrate it. ![]() On that note, there is something I do like to keep “on the dl” - my birthday. Similarly, the use of the phrase “down-low” to refer to closeted gay men who put on a hetero front came and went quite quickly by the time I first heard it, it was already being used more generally to refer to anything kept secret. Nobody seems to be aware of the verb definition of “low-key” any longer. So does he secretly look like an otter? Was the resemblance unexpected or just slight? Not quite, my friend declared it means “he really looks like it, but the person saying it just wanted to add some pop culture flair actually here the ‘low-key’ doesn’t mean anything at all.” And the irony is extended when people use “high-key” - yes, you read that right - as in, “Okay, high-key I think you’re hella cool.” In other words, “I have done some amount of internal processing and have concluded that you are a fantastic person, only I want to diffuse the potential awkwardness of saying so by using this stupid slang intensifier.”Īnd yet, another friend claims, “nobody uses ‘high-key’ anymore.” This doesn’t surprise me slang changes all the time, and it changes quickly. Scouring the Internet, I came across a sentence quoted from a teenager’s tumblr: “Why does he low-key look like this otter?” in reference to a man who, well, resembled an otter. (This is one of the definitions given on Urban Dictionary.) Your friend who wears a button-down and slacks to parties, who seems never to smile if he can help it? Turns out he has a razor-sharp wit and uses it sparingly: he’s low-key funny. But a person’s behavior can be low-key as well, if, as one friend put it, “they’re part of a group, but you never actually know where they are and they don’t show up to things.” And then there’s the peculiar adverbial “low-key” - to have some quality secretly or unexpectedly. This the slang definition given by some of the dictionaries I consulted. “We thought he was quiet but he’s actually low-key funny.”Īpparently, “low-key” can mean many different things in different contexts! A person’s personality can be low-key if they are quiet, modest, and laid-back. “We never see them around anymore, they’re so low-key.” Since that didn’t help, I did some fieldwork and asked around: “Can you use ‘low-key’ in a sentence?” The answers I got surprised me. But I asked my friend to explain what he meant anyway, and all of a sudden he was at a loss. After all, the context of the conversation was us remarking about how I hadn’t been around much lately. My initial thought, however, was to assume that he had meant to say “down low” - a slang term that refers to someone or something discreet. ![]() How can a person be low-key? To me, the word describes an environment or a mood, such as a low-key atmosphere at a small dinner party. I didn’t know how to respond to that, because I literally did not know what he meant. What does “low-key” mean to you? The other day, I was chatting with friend of mine who is a few years younger, and he said something along the lines of, “I guess you’re just kind of low-key, then, huh?” I am old now and can no longer keep up with young folks’ slang. ![]()
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