RAD ADJECTIVE (YOUTH CULTURE)

In young people's slang (especially in the US): really good or exciting; 'cool', 'hip', awesome. Etymology: Formed by abbreviating radical, itself a favourite term of approval among American youngsters in the eighties and originally (like tubular) a word used in Californian surfers' slang. Such slang terms of approval often get abbreviated to a snappy monosyllable--in the UK brilliant became brill by the same process. History and Usage: The longer form radical was used from the late sixties by surfers to describe a turn or other manoeuvre that was at the limits of control and safety, presumably by extending the political sense of the adjective 'representing the extreme section of a party'; this specific surfers' use was interpreted as the equivalent of far out and, like far out itself some time earlier, was soon weakened to express no more than approval and admiration for something. In the early eighties, as Californian surfers' slang became diluted and spread to a generation of young Americans through films and Valspeak, radical and the abbreviated form rad began to crop up frequently as the currently fashionable accolade. By the middle of the decade it had spread outside the US as well; its popularity in the UK, especially among the very young, was fed by American television shows, comics, and the craze for the Turtles in the late eighties. Kim Robb...sat down with a group of Prairie teenagers to discuss things that were 'cool'...'The word now,' says Robb,...'is rad.' Maclean's 6 Sept. 1982, p. 48 The raddest moments on Louder Than Love sound like the raddest moments on the Cult's Sonic Temple. Spin Oct. 1989, p. 99