Okay, so I was browsing the internet the other day, and I stumbled upon this whole “Seattle slang” thing. I’ve lived here for a while, but I’m always up for learning something new about the city, so I decided to do a deep dive.
Digging into Seattle Slang
First, I googled “Seattle slang.” That gave me a bunch of basic lists, which was a good starting point.
I jotted down some of the common ones I saw:
- “The Mountain is out” (meaning Mount Rainier is visible)
- “Filthy” (used to emphasize something, like “filthy good”)
- “Seattle Freeze” (the idea that it’s hard to make friends here)
- “Sunbreak” (when the sun comes out briefly during a cloudy day)
But I wanted more than just definitions. I wanted to see this slang in action. So I went to Reddit, specifically the r/Seattle subreddit. That place is a goldmine for local chatter.
I spent a good hour just scrolling through posts and comments. I searched for some of the terms I’d found earlier, to see how people actually used them. And boy, did I find some examples!
People were talking about having a “filthy good” time at a concert, complaining about the “Seattle Freeze,” and celebrating a “sunbreak” like it was a national holiday. I even saw a few debates about whether “the mountain is out” is overused. Classic Seattle.
I also discovered some slang terms I hadn’t seen on the initial lists. For instance, there’s the unique way that some Seattle people give direction, only north, south, west, east are used, never left or right.
Putting it All Together
After all that, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on some common Seattle slang. It’s not just about knowing the words; it’s about understanding the context and the culture behind them.
So, next time I’m chatting with someone and they say, “The mountain is out,” I’ll know exactly what they mean – and I might even throw in a “filthy good” for good measure. Or, maybe not, I am still working through the “Seattle Freeze.”
