Let’s talk about bougie.

Not because I want to, but because apparently, I have to. One minute I’m living my life peacefully, eating Cheez-Its from the box like a perfectly normal person, and the next, someone tells me that my snack of choice is “not very bougie.” Suddenly I’m spiraling. Do I want to be bougie? Am I supposed to be? Is Cheez-Its-from-the-box anti-bougie or post-bougie? Is there a chart?

This, dear reader, is the modern linguistic dilemma: the way new slang drops into the public consciousness like a Taylor Swift album. Suddenly everybody else understands its significance, and you’re just standing there, Googling it on your phone under the table like a complete doofus because you have no idea what it means.

But let’s back up a bit.

The word bougie is a shortened version of bourgeois, which you may have tripped over in high school English class during a bored reading of Animal Farm. Originally, the word referred to the middle class—especially those with materialistic values. But somewhere along the way, bourgeois got rebranded, dropped a few syllables, and emerged as bougie, ready for its close-up in Instagram captions and conversations with predominately younger people.

Now, bougie isn’t just a word. It’s a vibe. It’s used to describe anything fancy, overpriced, curated, artisanal, or generally engineered to look fabulous but cost at least 40% more than it should. Think charcuterie boards, pet acupuncture, or a $19 salad with edible flowers and hand-crafted croutons milled exclusively from Durum wheat.

Like so many words before it, bougie didn’t arrive through official linguistic channels. There was no press release. No public service announcement from Merriam-Webster. It just showed up one day—probably in a tweet—and everyone pretended they’d known it forever.

This isn’t new. Every generation has its linguistic curveballs. Think back to the first time you heard someone say woke and weren’t sure if they meant well-rested. Or when ghosting stopped being something Casper did and started referring to people vanishing like magicians with commitment issues. Or the moment super became an adjective or adverb sprinkled on literally everything. Super cute. Super annoying. Super not okay. Somewhere along the line, apparently, very wasn’t cutting it anymore. We now needed our intensifiers wearing spandex and capes.

Suddenly, your neighbor wasn’t just tired—she was super tired. Your pancakes were merely good—they were super good. And let’s not even talk about the time your friend described their relationship with their ex as “super complicated,” which turned out to mean, “We broke up last year but still share custody of the cat.”

It’s like someone gave the English language a Red Bull and said, “Here, drink this and go wild.” And it did.

What’s especially maddening is how these words are used with such confidence—by teenagers, coworkers, and that one snarky barista at Starbucks with the septum piercing who always judges your order. Suddenly, you’re the weird one for not knowing what cheugy means. (Side note: I still have no idea. I think it means Millennial, but in a rude way.)

We live in an era of accelerated language evolution. Social media these days can turn slang into a viral commodity, spreading words faster than a case of measles in Texas. One clever TikTok video and, boom, a word can go from obscure to omnipresent overnight. Before you can blink, your 85-year-old aunt is misusing it in her Facebook posts, and it’s already uncool.

There is, of course, no way to keep up. You can memorize Urban Dictionary like it’s the LSAT. You can lurk silently in Gen Z group chats (though that’s definitely not cool). But eventually, some shiny new word will appear, and you’ll do what we all do: nod like you get it, then frantically Google it.

Even worse, once you do figure it out and start using the word with some degree of confidence, the youths of America will inform you—often with a condescending smile—that it’s “cringe” now. (Which, by the way, used to be a verb and is now apparently a lifestyle assessment.)

So where does this leave us? From my perspective, ever confused. But also kind of in awe. Because, as frustrating as this ever-shifting lexicon is, it’s also proof of how alive language can be. Words aren’t fixed in time. They evolve, morph, shed meaning, gain swagger, and show up whether you invite them or not.

And yes, that means we’ll never be fully caught up. We’ll always be chasing after the latest slang  term like when you were a kid and there goes the ice cream truck. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe part of being human in the 21st century is learning to live with linguistic whiplash and accepting that someday—probably soon—bougie will be replaced by something even more baffling, like plunch (my prediction for 2026: a brunch/lunch hybrid served exclusively on uncomfortable furniture).

Until then, I’ll keep eating my Cheez-Its from the box and pretending I’m grounded and humble–not because I can’t afford goat cheese-stuffed, Castelvetrano olives or truffle popcorn, but because I reject elitist snack culture.

Or maybe, quite possibly, I’m just not bougie enough.