In internet slang, when something “goes hard,” it means it’s particularly cool or impressive. And the Instagram page “Hardest Post” certainly lives up to its name with its collection of hilarious memes and funny pictures. There’s a little bit of everything, and plenty of it is worth sharing.
So, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite posts from the page for you to enjoy. Scroll down to check them out, and let us know which ones made you laugh the hardest!
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What exactly makes a picture “go hard”? Well, it could be just about anything. It could be a funny photo that makes you laugh so much you immediately send it to your favorite group chat.
Or it could be a powerful image that leaves you speechless, or a sad one that stays on your mind long after you’ve seen it. There’s no single formula for it.
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Of course, “goes hard” is just one of many phrases we use to describe something we find impressive. We might also call it “fire” or say that someone “slayed.” Take your pick. We have a whole arsenal of slang expressions to choose from when we want to get creative with how we express ourselves.
But slang is hardly a modern invention, and it certainly didn’t begin with teenagers on social media. People have been coming up with their own informal ways of speaking for centuries.
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According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “slang” was first recorded in 1756, when it referred to the special vocabulary used by thieves and other groups on the edges of society.
By the early 1800s, its meaning had expanded to include informal language more generally. And that’s much closer to how we understand it today.
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But where did the actual word “slang” come from? That’s a surprisingly tricky question. Linguist Anatoly Liberman, writing for Oxford University Press, has suggested that it may have roots in northern English and Scandinavian words connected to wandering or moving freely.
The theory is that these words eventually became associated with groups of people and the way they spoke. However, the exact origin remains debated.
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People were also fascinated by unusual expressions long before anyone could Google what they meant. In fact, one of the earliest English slang dictionaries appeared in 1699, decades before the word “slang” was recorded in its familiar sense.
It collected expressions used by people from different walks of life, including sailors and laborers. Imagine flipping through a book just to figure out what someone at the local pub was talking about.
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And some of those playful expressions have had surprisingly long lives. Take “OK,” for example. According to Merriam-Webster, it first appeared in a Boston newspaper in 1839 as an abbreviation of “oll korrect,” a deliberately silly misspelling of “all correct.”
People at the time were apparently having plenty of fun with misspelled words and shortened phrases. Almost two centuries later, we’re still using one of their jokes every single day.
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Of course, slang keeps changing as new generations come up with their own expressions. And many words that seem brand new have actually been used by particular communities for decades.
Linguist Adam Alexic explained in an interview with Illinois Public Media that popular expressions like “slay” and “serve” have strong connections to Black and Latino queer ballroom culture in New York City. These words gradually spread beyond those communities and became familiar to a much wider audience.
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Social media has made that process much faster. A funny phrase can appear in a video, get repeated in thousands of comments, and suddenly become part of everyone’s vocabulary.
Sometimes, people start using expressions without knowing their original meaning or where they came from. And once a phrase gets popular enough, it can take on a whole new life of its own.
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So the next time you describe a picture as “going hard” or tell someone they absolutely “ate,” remember that you’re taking part in a tradition that’s been around for hundreds of years. Language has always given people room to have fun with words, and there’s no sign of that changing anytime soon.
Who knows which of today’s ridiculous expressions might still be around a century from now? Do you have a favorite slang phrase, or one that you absolutely can’t stand? Let us know in the comments below!
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