TikTok slang: 38 gen Z words and what they mean

TikTok slang is the set of words, abbreviations and in-jokes that spread through TikTok videos and comments, like rizz, delulu, aura and 67. The one people looked up most this week was "ight": "what does ight mean in text" had 391,139 searches on TikTok in the 7 days to 30 September 2026. It means "all right". Next came IK ("I know"), aura farming, ILY ("I love you") and rizzing.

This page does two things. It shows which slang words people are typing into TikTok's search bar to decode right now, with TikTok's own search numbers. Then it gives you a glossary of 38 gen Z slang words and abbreviations, each checked against Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, Cambridge or Oxford, so a parent, teacher or brand can read a caption and know what it says.

TikTok slang people looked up this week

These are the slang lookups people typed into TikTok, ranked by searches in the last 7 days. "First day to last day" shows how the daily reading moved across the week. "Videos" is how many videos TikTok matches to that exact search.

Data: TikTok Creator Search Insights via TokConnect, pulled 30 September 2026. Searches are TikTok's 7-day global figure. "New" means under 1,000 searches on the first day. Meanings are checked in the glossary below. Snapshot with all 28 typed searches.

Two things stand out. First, most lookups are texting abbreviations, not trendy new words. People want to decode a message: ight, IK, ILY, WYS. Second, rizz still pulls people in almost three years after it was Oxford's Word of the Year. Its four typed searches ("Rizzing", "what does rizzing mean", "rizzed meaning", "what does rizz mean") add up to 388,653, and the "-ing" and "-ed" forms are the ones rising.

The other typed slang searches were about slang itself. "nyc slangs" had 261,673 searches, "gen z slangs" 220,889, and "using gen z slang to kids" 211,763, up from 800 on day one. "ryan gosling gen z slang" (137,386) comes from a viral interview skit where the actor delivered his lines in gen Z slang.

Texting abbreviations people decode on TikTok

If you're a parent, start here. These short forms show up in texts and comments far more than the viral words.

Gen Z slang words and what they mean

These are the words you'll hear in TikTok videos, in class and at the dinner table. Many come from African American English, ballroom culture or gaming before TikTok made them mainstream, and the dictionaries below say so.

The biggest slang hashtags on TikTok

Search numbers show what people are trying to understand this week. Hashtags show how much a word has been used over its whole life on TikTok. These are lifetime totals for the top tag of each word.

Data: TikTok hashtag search for seven terms, 30 September 2026. Snapshot.

#brainrot and #rizz earn the most views per video, about 54,835 and 48,645, which says those words travel well beyond the people who use them. Treat #aura and #67 with care: both tags also hold aura-color, spiritual and number videos that have nothing to do with slang. #genzslang is small, but its videos average 40,821 views each, so explainer content finds an audience.

Which slang TikTok itself is grouping

TikTok returned 163 different topics for our slang searches. Only 28 were phrases people typed. The other 133 were topic labels TikTok writes itself to group many related searches, and they all read between 1.9 million and 4.8 million. Read them as the size of a theme, not as keywords. Their wording still shows which words TikTok sees people trying to decode, and most have no videos matched:

• "meaning of dry in slang": 4.8 million, no videos
• "mogged slang and edit culture": 4.7 million, no videos
• "drip slang meaning and usage": 4.7 million, no videos
• "slang meanings of cooked": 4.4 million, no videos
• "aura debt slang meaning": 4.3 million, no videos
• "parents reading Gen Alpha slang": 4.3 million, no videos
• "slang meaning of mid": 3.9 million, no videos
• "viral meaning of saying 67": 2.2 million, 502 videos

Broad words mostly return labels. "slang" gave 1 typed search out of 20 topics and "67 meaning" gave none, while "what does mean" gave 12. If you research slang on TikTok, search the way a confused person types: "what does [word] mean".

For parents: what to actually watch for

Most of what your kid says is harmless. "Cooked", "mid", "aura", "67" and "skibidi" are jokes, and a lot of gen Alpha slang is nonsense on purpose. Asking "what does that mean?" usually gets a laugh and a real answer. Parents are clearly asking: "using gen z slang to kids" went from 800 searches on day one to 211,763 by day seven.

A few words deserve a closer look:

• unalive: a stand-in for kill or die, often about suicide. It's common in memes, but if your child uses it about themselves, talk to them. In the US you can call or text 988 (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline).
• mog and chopped: both rank people by looks. Merriam-Webster traces mog to online forums about male status. Heavy use can be worth a chat about body image.
• OFN: mostly an oath, but it can also be a swear.

We left sexual and drug slang out of this glossary on purpose. If you see a word you don't know, check it in a dictionary like Merriam-Webster's slang section before assuming the worst; many sound worse than they are.

For creators and brands: using slang without the cringe

Of the 11 slang lookups in our top table, 8 had no videos matched. People are typing "what does ight mean in text" and TikTok has no video that answers it by name. That's a content gap, and it suits anyone who makes explainer content: teachers, parent creators, language accounts. Our content gap guide explains why that matters.

1. Title the video with the exact lookup. Say "what does IK mean" in the first seconds, put it on screen and write it in the caption. TikTok search matches words closely (how TikTok search works).
2. Answer fast, then give an example. A 10-second definition plus one real sentence beats a slow list.
3. Pair words people confuse. IK vs IKR, rizz vs rizzing, aura vs aura farming.
4. Brands: quote, don't perform. Dropping "it's giving" or "no cap" into ad copy can read as trying too hard. Reacting to a word in a trend lands better than dropping it into copy.
5. Credit the roots. Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster note that slay, no cap, bussin' and ight come from African American English or ballroom culture. Say so in explainers.

Autocomplete adds more ideas. After "what does", TikTok suggested "what does 🫰 mean" and "what does dopamine mean". After "what does mean on tiktok" it offered "what does for you mean on tiktok" and "what does first mean on tiktok", so people also need the app's own words explained (suggestions snapshot). For more on reading these, see TikTok search suggestions.

How we got these numbers

On 30 September 2026 we ran 10 slang searches through TikTok's Creator Search Insights data, including "meaning", "slang", "what does mean", "what does mean in text", "gen z slang", "rizz meaning", "aura meaning" and "67 meaning", and took the top 20 topics for each: 200 topics, 163 unique. We split them into 28 typed searches (all under 1 million) and 133 TikTok topic labels. We added two autocomplete pulls and seven hashtag searches. Every definition was checked against Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, Cambridge or Oxford. We left out "ohf", "oms", "tp", "mmm" and "huh" because no dictionary pinned down the slang meaning people were after.

"Searches" is TikTok's search popularity: searches in the last 7 days, worldwide (see TikTok search volume). You can see the same numbers in Creator Search Insights, in the TikTok app or on desktop at tiktok.com/csi with a TikTok login, one search at a time and with no export (TikTok Help Center). Or ask TokConnect "what does aura farming mean and how many people search it?" and get the searches, videos and hashtags in one answer. For the biggest searches across every topic, see most searched on TikTok.