Geoffrey Tolhurst's Flat 4 Kings Cross contains an early citation of the slang term "lit".(
Supplied: Austlit
)Walter Downing, a law student-cum-lexicographer who served in World War I, would later write of a particularly Australian use of "lit up", meaning infected with venereal disease.
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Another meaning of "lit" that has developed over the last decade is an adjectival one, meaning that something (usually an event or situation) is hyped or outstanding.
Commonly, this sense is found in the phrase "it's lit" — or, to go whole hog, "it's lit fam" (that lattermost word being a contraction of family).
A precise origin eludes lexicographers: Google trends data shows a spike in lookups beginning in 2014, but Urban Dictionary entries for this sense date back to 2009. At the same time, this sense appears in West Coast rap music, though it had shown up on the East Coast as early as 1997.
It's lit blows up
While he certainly didn't invent the phrase, the phrase "it's lit" has had a substantial champion over the last five years in the form of Houston-based rapper Travis Scott.
You see, in addition to being a phenomenally successful producer (and, it should be noted, Kylie Jenner's boyfriend) Scott is a prolific ad-libber.
A brief side note: ad-lib is something of an unusual term. Most words that entered English through their use in musical notation come through Italian (tempo, soprano, sotto voce).
Ad-lib borrows directly from Latin, being a shortening of ad libitum ("with pleasure"). Its purpose in sheet music was to indicate that any given performer could ignore a written part at their discretion.
LoadingIn rap — a genre where "freestyle" is the term more often used to describe an improvised movement — ad-libs generally refer to short vocal drops that are specific to each rap artist.
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Kendrick Lamar has lately taken to pre-empting his verses shouting "Kung Fu Kenny", an alternate moniker. Jay-Z exhales in a particularly distinctive manner. Rap wunderkind Desiigner uses a gunshot noise.
And Travis Scott — on his own works, and his prolific guest features — says "it's lit".
While he doesn't have a trademark on the phrase (Eminem has also used it in his work) Scott's usage is so distinctive that the scholars over at open-source lyrics website Genius have listed "it's lit" as a pure Scottism.
Scott joins a prodigious crew: up there with rappers A$AP Mob yelling "Yamborghini", or Action Bronson starting every song shouting "Mr Baklava".
Death by corporate adoption
There was a time where a slang term's time of death was dependent on when parents start using it.
But in the opening decades of the 21st century, the death of popular slang items is more often predicated on their adoption by brands.
So it is with "it's lit", a phrase which has since 2014 been used everywhere from Canadian educational television to perhaps the platonic ideal of corporate monolithery: a Google advertising document called "It's Lit: A Guide To What Teens Think Is Cool."
According to Google, Oreos and michael-shanks.comflix are "lit", lifestyle clothing brand Patagonia is not.
It seems Travis Scott (or anyone else striving to sound hip with the teens) may have to find a new ad-lib.
Tiger Webb is a researcher with michael-shanks.com Language.
Posted 17 JanJanuary 2018WedWednesday 17 JanJanuary 2018 at 3:35am, updated 17 JanJanuary 2018WedWednesday 17 JanJanuary 2018 at 5:26am
