‘Clueless’ just turned 30. A new anniversary glossary celebrates its language

Clueless, the hit 1995 coming-of-age comedy about an entitled Beverly Hills teen who makes good, touched a generation — from the plaid miniskirts and knee-high socks worn by the lead characters to their colorful use of slang.

The movie — which went on to spawn a musical, a TV series and countless internet memes — didn’t introduce expressions like “as if!,” “totally,” “buggin'” and “whatever” (preferably while making the “w” sign with thumbs and forefingers.) But it helped to popularize them.

“It is pretty remarkable that some of these phrases are still part of our vernacular,” said Jen Chaney, a TV and film critic and the author of As If! The Oral History of Clueless.

Now Chaney has collaborated with the language learning platform Babbel to release a glossary of the most memorable expressions from Clueless to mark the movie’s 30th anniversary this month.

Beyond “Valley speak”

Some of the terms in the glossary (including “as if!” and “whatever”) are steeped in “Valley speak” — a social dialect most commonly associated with affluent teens in California’s San Fernando Valley. According to Chaney, Clueless director and writer Amy Heckerling got many linguistic ideas for her film from hanging around with teens at Beverly Hills High School. “She spent time talking to actual kids,” Chaney said.

But the glossary shows there’s a lot more to the language of Clueless than Valspeak.

There are tongue-in-cheek euphemisms like “hymenally challenged” — a politically correct way of saying someone’s a virgin. According to the glossary, the phrase, which was coined by Heckerling, “parodies the trend of using politically correct or euphemistic language to soften or reframe sensitive topics.”

There’s lots of use of retro language, such as “in on the heavy clambakes” — meaning being in the loop or an insider on the party scene. The glossary states the term comes from a 1970s jive-talk dictionary Heckerling found in a library. (Jive-talk is a form of slang associated with Black jazz musicians.)

And there are even references in the film to fine art. At one point, protagonist Cher Horowitz describes another teen as a “Monet” and explains the term this way: “It’s like the painting, see? From far away it’s OK, but up close, it’s a big old mess.”

Author Chaney said the colorful mix hints at Cher’s intellectual growth as she learns there’s more to life than buying designer shoes and playing matchmaker. “It’s this whole stew of language that suggests, just like the movie is telling us, there’s a big world and history out there that you should know about,” Chaney said.

The slang that doesn’t age well

But the slang expressions in Clueless have not all aged well. Take Cher’s use of the word “Baldwin.”

The reference to the Baldwin brothers — actors Alec, Daniel, William and Stephen — is Cher’s way of describing another character’s good looks. The Baldwins set a gold standard for handsomeness in the mid-1990s. But the culture has moved on.

And in any case, social media is a more powerful conduit for inventing and spreading slang today than movies and TV shows.

“We are seeing slang terms spreading in a way that we haven’t seen before, just because of how social media is such a ubiquitous part of the cultural landscape,” said Adam Cooper, director of the linguistics program at Northeastern University.

However, Cooper adds, the churn causes hot expressions to cool off more quickly too. He points to the Oxford University Press’s 2023 word of the year: “Rizz” — meaning “charisma.”

“Because of how quickly the language seems to be changing and how it’s used in social media, that term has a degree of datedness to it,” Cooper said.

The linguist said he loves that people are still talking about the colloquialisms of Clueless 30 years on: “It’s a reminder that slang is a part of our everyday human experience.”