Overheard at Patna Medical College and Hospital — Syed Amaad Aatique, a student, talking on campus: “I had to pull an all-nighter to cram for the mid-sem paper. So, I decided to crash an hour or two before dinner.”

Deciphered — Pull an all-nighter stands for staying awake the entire night; cram means to study at the last minute; mid-sem clearly is the easiest — mid-semester, and crash means to sleep.

A walk through any college is enough to enlighten one in slangs and it remains one of the quintessential traits of campuses around the city.

Slingo/slanguage — as some prefer to call it, has always been interesting to hear but with every season, new words and meanings come up and it becomes practically impossible for parents, teachers or even alumnus to keep up with the conversation.

Sometimes intelligible and mostly not, students say perky and chirpy slangs are fun to use rather than the drab-and-dull language elders communicate in.

Medha Sharma, a student of Patna Women’s College, said with a smirk: “Slangs are a creative use of language by students. As soon as an elder person starts using slangs, we chuck them right out of the window.”

College goers have a rich vocabulary of slang related to campus landmarks, fellow students and teachers. Medha said: “For library, we use libes. Audi sounds cooler than auditorium, cants stands for canteen and grub is the oft-used word for college food.”

Looking around, she added: “Princi means principal and tutes stands for tutor.”

A funny aspect of slangs is most of the time they are used to describe just the opposite. “Wicked means cool and in style, tight means good. Dope also means good,” said Roshan, a student of St Xavier’s College.

Farrukh Afzal, a BTech student of Maulana Azad College of Engineering, said: “Horizontal engineering is a term we use for napping. Chips are the small chits taken into the examination hall for fudging, which of course means cheating.”

Terms popular on social networking sites such as ASAP (as soon as possible) and IDK (I don’t know)have also found their way into campuses.

While English remains the language of choice for slangs, Hindi, too, has its own set. Phrases like “yaar, kaand ho gaya” meaning “friend, a serious problem has cropped up” has become popular across campuses.

Bakra is used for someone who is being fooled, while ghanta means nothing and is generally used to snap at somebody asking idiotic questions, said youths on different campuses in the city.

The new campus lingo has its fair share of detractors in teachers and parents.

Farrukh’s father, Farhan Afzal said: “When we were in college, even we used slangs but the ones the youths of today use seem to have no connection with what they actually mean.”

Rakesh, the father of a 20-year-old, said: “I have often found myself questioning the meaning of certain words and phrases my son uses. Once I asked him to come out of his room and have dinner when he told me ‘Later dad, got bare work to do’. I had no idea what he meant. Later, he explained that bare was the new slang for a lot. I am shocked at the way children play with language these days.”