Jugendliche Menschen in Deutschland, benutzen Sie diese tatsächlich?

it’s so accurate that 99% of germans hear these words the first time when the Jugendwort gets announced and Susanne Daubner is reading it in the tagesschau.

„Checkst du“ and „das crazy“ are phrases many people use. I would say most others are just English words like lowkey and literally..

Gammelfleischparty, Smombie, – Never

hartzen, I bims – Some for a short period of time, but not anymore.

Goofy, Smash, Aura etc. – Yes, I think these words are relevant to internet culture, but please note that there is not one „youth internet culture“ in Germany. For example, some TikTok users probably use these words quite often, while some Reddit users claim they’ve never heard of them.

[removed]

Some are actually quite ok, some are a bit weird, some are pretty absurd, some are just rehashed phrases from 10+ years ago, making a comeback. A lot of the times, it’s basically just internet slang.

The whole Jugendwort thing is a bit of a meme in itself because in the past some of these were way out of touch and basically boiled down to what old people think young people sound like. It feels like the selections have gotten better in recent years though.

i routinely hear „i bims“ und „hartzen“. 
i would also like to add my favorite: „darf er so?“

Goonen is 100% a 2025 word. Idk how many times ive seen it used by youth this year, especially on the internet

I’ve definitely used „I bims“ and the whole lingo around it for far longer than it was actually cool.

I bims, 1 teenager vong 2017 her!

Hi. I’m sorry, the goofy from the last rotten meat party. Hard smombies have a bad aura, goon on their smash chats all day, you check? Totally crazy.

Goonen originally came from subcultures in Reddit, online games and Discord and made its way into TikTok and schools but not sure if it’s a 2025 thing. Heard of this from American teens some time ago. Same way some other words are viral in tiktok if they make it into German tiktok and become mainstream they get adapted until it turns into cacophony and people stop saying it

It’s really weird, some of these are spot on current colloquial language use, some are more like „meme words“ that are not used all that much, and some seem entirely made up and cringey.

I work a lot with teens and 20somethings, and there is definitely a whole spectrum of words and phrases and expressions. Some are very specific to socio-cultural groups, some drift from one group to the other, for example many slang words have an Arabic or Turkish origin and are only used by migrant / bilingual kids at first but then they disperse into the wider demographic. Also, even a small age difference of 3-4 years can make a huge difference in language use. Many of these words are very short-lived, too, after a while they are either completely forgotten or they become fossilized as memes or something you only use sarcastically.

not really. Sure, a few words are regularly used, but the thing is that its a contest hosted by Langenscheid (German Language Encyclopedia), where the „Jugendwort“ is voted by anyone on the Internet.

If you had heard from the „4Chan Botvotes the new Mascot for Kinder situation“, than its kinda like that, exept WAY more tamer.

The reason the year is given for each term is that these aren’t necessarily current any more. Particularly on the internet, slang tends to change very quickly, and by the time such terms have become widespread enough to find their way into lists like this, many of them are already on the way out. And of course, often these terms might be used in some communities, but not all of them.

It’s good to be able to recognize some of the more common terms, but maybe don’t use them yourself until you’re *really* confident you can use them correctly.