When a “roadman” (a streetwise young person) out for a stroll trips over a kerb and temporarily loses his composure, possibly dropping his iPhone, you might hear his companion cry out: “Oh. Peak for you!”
To those over 30, it sounds a strange reaction. The “peak” of what, exactly? Embarrassment? In fact, these days this is a heartfelt commiseration, as readers familiar with current street slang will have recognised. For “peak” now means bad and, specifically, a “random” bit of bad luck, and any roadman, or rebellious teenager (are there other kinds?), understands this. Just like the word “sick”, which switched from meaning ill to something extremely good some while ago, “peak” has changed sides.
It is a journey from negative to positive, and vice versa, that has worthy historical tradition. The words “terrific” and “awesome”, after all, both started out more bad than good.
While we are in the “hood”, it might be worth noting other recent street coinages that can confuse parents. Spellings, of course, are not important, but if something is “bate” it is obvious and should not have been done, or said. And if something is “long”, it was not worth the effort, while the word “bare” is now used as an intensifier, rather like the Scottish use of “pure”, as in “pure pish”. So any teenager reading this by accident, for example, would consider it a bare long way of describing something totally bate.
I should be “prang”, or scared, I know, about venturing into territory so clearly demarcated by age and probably also by region. And, as with any fashionable usage, it is perilous to represent these words in print. Even if you can guess the spelling, they can look a bit lame on the page. And nothing ages so fast as slang.