WICKED ADJECTIVE (YOUTH CULTURE)

In young people's slang: excellent, great, wonderful. Etymology: A reversal of meaning: compare bad. In this case, there might first have been a catch-phrase or advertising slogan so good it's wicked which was later abbreviated to wicked alone; however, it is not unusual for an adjective to be used as an 'in' word in the opposite sense to its usual one among a limited group of people, and then pass into more general slang. History and Usage: In US slang, wicked has been used in the sense 'formidable' since the end of the nineteenth century (compare mean in British English). A famous example occurs in F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (1920), when Sloane calls for music and announces Phoebe and I are going to shake a wicked calf. It was only in the early eighties, though, that wicked was taken up by young people (including, and perhaps especially, young children) as a fashionable term of approval, often preceded by the adverb well. This usage, unlike the earlier slang use, spread outside US English to enjoy a vogue among British and Australian youngsters as well. A children's weekend television programme in the UK took up the theme in its title, It's Wicked! I've been to loads of Acid House parties. We have a wicked time but never, not never, do we take any drugs. Time Out 18 Oct. 1989, p. 9 This boy looked in wonder at the polyurethane and leather marvel and offered it the coolest of street compliments. 'Well wicked,' he breathed. Daily Telegraph 9 June 1990, p. 13