Sunday Rerun (from 2015): The Fleek Is In!

 I like to think I stay up with the English language, both the formal variety that frowns on people saying, "Your looking great" or, "I should of stayed home that night"  and the colloquial, in which people say something is "bad" when they think it's good, or "sick" when it's well, or "near miss" when two airplanes nearly hit, and "the alarm went off" when, in fact, it went on.

I love language and the words it uses.  And I read a lot, from newspapers to magazines to almanacs and biographies, and you know what?  That's a good way to run into a lot of words, and when I come across a word I don't know, I like to look it up.

And so, it has come to my attention that a new term meaning great, good, fantastic, groovy, marvelous, purt-near-perfect is being used.

I like to have a picture with every blog entry, but what picture could I use
to illustrate a word?  Then it hit me...this is a picture of a Taylor Pork Roll
sandwich from Uncle Bill's in Cape May, which is three fleeks right there!

I have to admit, I thought I heard it wrong the first time someone said someone was "on fleek." I thought they were saying they were down on Fleet Street, and I thought, oh man, I have to go down to Fell's Point to pick her up?

But "on fleek", a term that no one can really pinpoint the etymology of, means all of the above terms.  Your hair is on fleek. That song is on fleek. Your shirt, your sox, the sandwich you gobbled at lunch, your roommate's willingness to share the cheese tray her mother sent her, and the likelihood that love will follow a new bride and groom all the days of their lives: all of these things are on fleek.

And just so you know, I checked, and it's not all right to say that rotten fish, running out of gas on the Beltway, losing your all-day MTA pass and catching a cold from the snotty cashier at the Save'N'Run are "off fleek."