Slang Dictionary To The Rescue

(CBS)  If you think "booty" is what babies wear on their feet and "peeps" are sounds that chickens make, the dictionary of teen slang may provide you with the knowledge to be "down."

Students at Berkeley High in California have, literally, written the book on teen slang - an effort good enough to be cited by Webster's dictionary.

A kid demonstrated the following rap for CBS News Correspondent Tracy Smith's Study Hall report: "I'm not trying to see bs, I'm just trying to spit a rhyme for CBS. My rhymes are sick. They come out clean when I'm spittin' 'em."

If you're not quite sure what he's saying, no worries: Smith found translators.

Teacher Rick Ayers was inspired by the way his kids would communicate. He says, "I'd hear them in the hall and they'd be verbal geniuses. They'd just be talking, talking, talking, inventing, creating."

So he had his class create a guide to their language, complete with words like "hooptie."

"Hooptie: another name for an automobile," explained one kid.

There's cheese, another word for smile. And schmabbin': to burn rubber, as in those guys were out schmabbin' last night.

Slang varies according to culture and geography. But around Berkeley High, this book is the definitive guide. In other words, "it's the phat bomb, fo' sheazy, a'ight?" Translation: it's an excellent resource to be sure, don't you agree?

Some of it is pretty clever, like the word "ghost" taken from the movie of the same name. If you say, "I'm ghost", it means, "I'm gone." Or you could just say "Swayze."

One girl explained the word, this way, "Swayze, which means ghost: to leave, to vacate. After this class, I'm Swayze. You know the movie 'Ghost' with Patrick Swayze."

Yeah, we get it.

And there's more like, "crotch walker." It means shoplifter or people who stuff things down their pants. Crime is a popular slang topic.

Another word a girl offered was: "turkey bacon," she explained, "undercover police. 'Put that away! I think those guys are turkey bacon.'"

The trouble is, the words change constantly so once you've mastered the slang dictionary, you might as well burn it.

Here are some more of Smith's favorites: "seven thirty," which means crazy like the crooked hands on the clock at seven thirty. And "seven days," which means weak.