Lost in translation?
We all have sayings that have been used for years that we take for granted that everyone knows the meaning of, for instance you hear “no good deed goes unpunished”, you know that it means you did something nice and still something went wrong.
We assume that everyone from every generation knows what you mean because these are not new, but when people from Generation Z are asked the meaning, they are perplexed and don’t know the meaning. Gen Z is the generation that comes after Millennials, they’re in their 20’s and have grown up with iPhone, Instagram, Facebook and Tik Tok, they don’t like to talk on the phone but are pretty much never without it.
They prefer texting to calling and are the least conversational of all the previous generations because they have never had to conduct many in most of their day to day life. It’s no wonder they don’t understand these sayings, because they don’t have enough everyday conversations and interactions to actually hear them.
Bite the bullet
That is another saying that they don’t understand the reference to. For the record, it means “to deal with something that you’ve been avoiding. It supposedly comes from patients (probably soldiers) that were given a bullet to bite down on to deal with the pain of having surgery before the days of anesthesia. If you tell a Gen Z person to “bite the bullet” you will get a very confused look.
Survey says!
Someone asked Gen Z’ers if they knew the meaning of several phrases and terms that have been around for a long time and sadly only 40% were familiar with these following top 9 that they were at a total loss to explain the meaning. We will do our best to explain them here.