From our other sites
The story
The results of a poll titled “Words That Would Be Shocking to Hear Are Dead Slang,” run by the ranking site “Everyone’s Ranking,” became a hot topic on 5ch’s Geisoku Sokuho+ board after “Gaan” (an exclamation of shock, like “bonk!”) placed 3rd and “Tamma” (kid slang for “time out!” or “hold up!”) placed 2nd. In the thread, many users pushed back, insisting “Neither Gaan nor Tamma are dead slang,” and instead nominated nostalgic alternatives one after another — like “Gekioko Punpun Maru” (a meme phrase for “furious and fuming”), “Shame” (old slang for a photo taken on a phone camera), and “Ikeyama Bunbun Maru” (a baseball player’s nickname for his big swing). Just how “dead” a word really feels varies sharply by age group, fueling a lively debate.
2026.10.11
“Everyone’s Ranking,” a user-participation ranking site run by Infonia (Minato, Tokyo), is running a poll on “Words That Would Be Shocking to Hear Are Dead Slang.”
Coming in at 3rd place was “Gaan.” Voters shared comments like, “I can’t believe that’s dead slang,” “People around me definitely don’t say ‘Gaan’ anymore,” and “I use it all the time, so it’d be a real shock to hear that.”
Source: otonanswer.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
You can totally tell some middle-aged reporter desperately Googled this ranking together.
Honestly, even saying "Google it" feels like dead slang at this point — or at least embarrassing to say out loud.
(≧∇≦)b
Maybe someday in the distant future, "kusa ga haeru" ("grass is growing," i.e. "that's hilarious") will be treated as a proper idiom.
That feels like a 50-and-up kind of thing to say.
"Look what just turned up…"
—by Atsuno Izumi
Kakuranger…
Did you see what's #1?
That one's basically a joke entry.
"Run-run," "Ike-ike," "Uki-uki" (all cutesy, now-dated expressions of excitement).
but people still say "Gaan."
(´･ω･`) Guess that one's a no-go, huh.
Guess it really does get passed down from generation to generation.
Huh? Just call it a photo.
You clearly know it's dead and you're saying it on purpose.
Young baseball fans probably don't even know who Ikeyama is lol
He's a team manager now, isn't he.
It actually comes from hanafuda playing cards — the October "deer and maple" card… the deer on that card is looking away, so "deer-10" (shika-10) became "shikato"…
feels like these are headed for the dead-slang graveyard someday.
Isn't "wanchan" already like a 50-year-old term at this point?
Feels like it's long past "slang" and just a fixture of the language now.
A total smash hit with the hip young things of today ("nau na yangu" — very 1980s slang for "today's youth").
Gyaah! Guan Yu!
I always figured "wanchan" (short for "one chance") was meant to be used in a positive sense, but sometimes I see it used like "wanchan I might die," which seems off — is that actually correct usage?
That's correct usage.
It's like in mahjong — when your tile doesn't come through, you're basically dead.
I see it on social media too, not just 5ch —
is everyone who uses it actually from Kansai?
Background and Key Points of the Discussion
The source behind this story is a poll from “Everyone’s Ranking,” a user-voting site, and the age range and number of voters were never disclosed — so the rankings don’t necessarily reflect how society as a whole feels. The thread split along generational lines: some felt the listed words were “still totally normal to use,” while others had “never even heard of them.” Emotional exclamations like “Gaan” and “Tamma” apparently still get used across a wide range of age groups, while internet-meme-derived phrases like “Gekioko Punpun Maru” seemed to have a much narrower user base. Words like “shame” (phone-camera photos) and “shikato” (to ignore someone) also came up — their origins are old, but they haven’t actually fallen out of use. Overall, whether a word counts as “dead slang” seemed to hinge less on how old it is and more on whether it’s still being newly picked up by people today. Since the original article never revealed what took 1st place, this piece doesn’t touch on that either.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geisoku Sokuho+) thread “Ranking of ‘Shocking Words to Be Told Are Dead Slang’ — #3 ‘Gaan,’ #2 ‘Tamma’… What’s #1?“
Leave a Reply