Words in green = not offensive
Words in orange = somewhat offensive
Words in red = very offensive
A common slang word for someone who is attractive is to say they are hot (adj.) or call them a hottie (n.):
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“That lifeguard is hot!”
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“Let’s go talk to those hotties playing volleyball.”
Cute (adj.) and a cutie (n.) are also used for attractive people (both children and adults), but these have more of a playful/sweet connotation, whereas hot/hottie is sexier and only used for teenagers/adults.
- “Here’s a photo of my 5-year old son. Isn’t he a cutie?”
- “Chris isn’t the hottest guy in my class, but he is kinda cute.”
Other slang words for attractive people include:
- a ten / a perfect ten
This probably comes from rating people’s appearance on a scale of 1 to 10. - a looker / a stunner
“Wow, that flight attendant is a looker. I wonder if she’s single?” - hot stuff
“He’s not my favorite actor, but I watch all his movies ‘cause I think he’s hot stuff!” - foxy (usually used for women, with “lady”)
“She is one foxy lady for sure. She could be a model.” - a stud / a hunk (only for men)
“One of my coworkers is a major hunk, I get nervous every time I talk to him.” - a babe (usually for women, although occasionally for men as well)
“That babe over there in the red bikini is checking you out, dude!”
(checking you out = looking at you as if she is attracted to you)
If someone is very athletic, with very well-defined muscles, we can say they are buff or ripped. Some derogatory words for a very skinny person are a string bean or a twig, and there are many derogatory slang words for a fat person, including fat ass and lard-ass. A word making fun of someone who is short and rather weak is a shrimp.
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“He started lifting weights six months ago, and now he’s totally ripped.”
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“I was such a twig when I was a teenager; I couldn’t gain weight no matter what.”
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“You’re going to run a marathon? Yeah right. You’re such a fat ass you can’t even climb the stairs without getting out of breath.” (sarcastic, offensive)
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“That shrimp is trying out for the basketball team? He doesn’t have a chance.”
Children in English are also called kids, and some slang terms for them are kiddos, tykes / little tykes, munchkins, and (less commonly) rug rats. These are usually used affectionately.
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“I’m taking my kiddos to the park this afternoon.”
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“The little tyke cries every time I take him to the dentist.”
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“We went on vacation with my best friend, her husband, and their three little munchkins.”
The word brat means a child who has bad manners and expects to get his/her own way all the time, behaving badly in order to manipulate adults into giving them what they want. You can also call an adult a brat if he/she is acting like a badly-behaved child.
Calling an adult a “baby” can be used as a term of endearment in romantic relationships, or by men looking at an attractive woman who they don’t know. But it can also be used in a negative sense, to say that someone is being immature, usually saying that they are “such a baby”:
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I can’t believe you’re angry that I ate the last piece of cake. You’re such a baby.
Some informal ways to refer to “young people” in general (can be kids, but also can be teenagers or young adults) is young’uns, which is short for “young ones,” or youngsters. These are usually used by older people when reflecting on the fact that they can’t do as much as young people can – or that they have more experience than young people do:
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“Snowboarding is definitely a sport for youngsters… my 60-year-old knees couldn’t take it!”
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“Our company just hired a bunch of young’uns who think they know everything. I’m in charge of their training.”
A young whippersnapper is a young person who is not important, but who acts smart and pretentious (like the new employees mentioned in the second example).
Adults around 50-60 years old who have adult children that have recently left home to start their own lives can be called empty nesters. This refers to a nest being a place where birds live, and when the baby birds have grown up and flown away from the nest, leaving only the parents, it feels empty.
Finally, we have several derogatory slang words for old people:
- old geezer (usually used for a man, especially an eccentric one)
- old hag (for a woman, especially an ugly and disagreeable one)
- old fart / old fogey (can be both men and women, especially those who have old-fashioned ideas and refuse to modernize)
Remember that these are insulting!!!
Finally, when someone looks exactly like someone else, he/she is a dead ringer for the other person: “People say my cousin is a dead ringer for Brad Pitt.”
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