This article examines the lexical and semantic features of contemporary youth slang in the UK and the USA, focusing on how cultural context shapes its creation, evolution and interpretation. Using a linguacultural approach, we analyze data from slang dictionaries, youth-oriented media and corpora of spoken English to identify key semantic domains and sociocultural forces behind popular terms. We find that youth slang is characterized by constant innovation, expressive/emotive usage, brevity and creative word formation. Slang serves strong identity and in-group functions often drawing on subcultural values and media (music, internet, activism) as sources. Comparative analysis shows both shared patterns and culture specific variants. For example, British youth have adopted American-origin terms (bonkers, cheers, queue) under Gen Z influence, while American youth incorporate Britishisms (mate, wicked). Illustrative examples (sick, cool, peng, lit, ace) demonstrate semantic shifts like amelioration, metaphorical extension and reclaiming taboo language. Our findings indicate that youth slang semantics reflect underlying cultural schemes and worldviews: terms often encode shared values and attitudes. We conclude that cultural semantics-how language encodes a groups’s collective knowledge and values-plays a central role in shaping youth slang. These insights underscore slang’s importance as a window into contemporary youth culture and linguistic change.

youth slang, cultural semantics, sociolinguistics, UK, US, sub-lexicon, Gen Z, semantic shift, amelioration.

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