Author's Note: This piece was written for my students and was used in a lesson during which we evaluated persuasive writing techniques, used context clues to determine unknown words, and traced an author's argument.
Sick, groovy, tubular, keen! Every generation has its slang terms, its words and phrases that not only capture the feelings of the moment, but the energy and attitudes of a particular age group. I’ll admit that certain words from my generation still have a chokehold on my vocabulary, evidenced by my yearly (broken) resolution not to use the word “dude” to refer to students. And I’m okay with that. Logically, I understand that slang terms are not only useful, but even beautiful in the way they can communicate a sense of belonging amongst a group of individuals. Except sigma. I hate sigma.
Now, you might be thinking, “Gee, Ms. Stowe. Hate sure is a strong word!” and I would agree that, yes, indeed it is. However, I stand by it. Of all the slang I’ve come across in my years of teaching, “sigma” is my least favorite, and that’s saying something, since I taught through the “ratchet” craze of 2014. My problem with sigma isn’t the fact that it’s slang; as I mentioned above, I have no problem with slang and respect it from a linguistic perspective. It’s the word itself I take umbrage with.
My irritation probably begins because “sigma” was a pre-existing word whose meaning was changed. In and of itself, that’s not so unusual for slang. Ask anyone who’s received a compliment on their “sick” skateboard, and they’d agree that words change their meaning all the time. Sigma, however, is a bit different. Its origin is as the 18th letter of the Greek alphabet, representing either an “s” or “z” sound, depending on placement. In modern usage, it most often appears in the disciplines of mathematics and science, where its symbol, 𝚺, is used in various equations. This isn’t a common, old-fashioned word being repurposed–it’s a specialized term currently being used in a number of academic disciplines. So, how did a symbol that requires a lengthy search through Microsoft Word’s special characters keyboard become a slang term? Well, that story highlights my next issue with sigma…
The term “sigma”, or, more precisely “sigma male” was first coined in 2010 (yes, before you were born) by a blogger named Robert Beale who used it to describe a category of men with certain characteristics. According to Beale’s theories, men are divided into a social hierarchy consisting of alpha, beta, sigma, etc. with each category having its own “rank” and behavior. Now, personally, I think Robert Beale could benefit from a little more fresh air and a little less Animal Planet, but let’s just go along with him for a minute. Even if you assume that his categorizing of men according to his invented hierarchy is accurate (Spoiler alert: it’s not. Humans don’t work like that.) then why would “sigma” be the word of choice? Since it’s supposed to describe a man who is both self-reliant and popular, simultaneously admired and ostracized by others, it’s unclear if the original usage of “sigma” was complimentary or not. Although, now that I think about it, maybe that’s exactly why it became so popular. If you can both compliment and insult someone with the same word, then that saves time and fits nicely into a 30 second TikTok. That kind of efficiency would be especially prized by the generation that grew up never having to wait for their dial-up internet to connect, you lucky ducks, you.
Even if I could overlook the original meaning of “sigma male” and all the deeply problematic thinking it represents, I still wouldn’t be on board with its current usage. You see, the word “sigma” is reaching a saturation point, where its presence in teenage conversations is so eponymous that you can’t walk through a school hallway without hearing it multiple times. I’ve heard it used it as every single part of speech, such as:
“What the sigma?”
Direct object, generally a noun.
“That’s so sigma!”
Adverb.
“You’re a sigma rizz!”
Adjective…and don’t even get me started on rizz.
“He just sigma-ed that test!”
Verb. And a horrible misuse of verbification. Come on guys. We Millennials walked so you could run with verbing nouns, and this is what you choose to do with it?
I could go on, but I know from teaching you all grammar, that it would require a review of parts of speech, and none of us have the energy for that at this point in the year. So, I’ll just make my point that any word that is used so often in a conversation, in so many different ways, eventually just becomes meaningless. I have listened to conversations in this very building where it was clear the person was talking just to talk, not caring what they were saying or who was listening, but talking simply for the pleasure of hearing the sound of their own voice. Their conversation was not a conversation at all, but a monologue of slang terms and internet references strung together into one long, exhausting, run-on sentence, like a faucet someone had left turned on full blast, and I had to ask myself…what’s the point? I know middle school students love to talk, and as long as I’m not teaching or you’re not supposed to be working, I’m all for it! As an English teacher, I value communication. It’s how we shape our own ideas and identities, and learn to understand the ideas and identities of others. Communication and the sharing of our thoughts is, in my opinion, the single most powerful and uniquely human ability we have. Therefore, I get a little peeved when conversations become nothing more than an endless stream of noise punctuated by letters of the Greek alphabet.
By this point, you’re probably all rolling your eyes and at least thinking “Okay, Boomer. We’re saying it IRONICALLY.”. Well, cool your jets, turbo. I’m no Boomer. I’m from the generation that invented doing stupid things ironically…or at least saying we were when we were called out by our peers. I graduated college at the height of the mustache trend and had more friends wearing slouchy beanies and thick-framed sunglasses with the lenses popped out than any of us care to remember. I suppose I can accept using the term “sigma” if you’re using it as a self-aware joke, poking fun at your generation’s desire to categorize and label yourselves with snappy, unique terms. Looking at it that way, maybe “sigma” is the new “nerd”?
In conclusion, I suppose I’ve accepted that “sigma” is just part of current vocabulary, and I’ll have to ride it out the same way that I weathered the days of fidget spinners and water bottle flipping and cinnamon challenges. There is one thing I hope, though, and that is that the next time you hear someone use the word “sigma” or, heaven forbid, you use it yourself (which will probably be within the next five minutes) you’ll at least stop to think of the origin of the word and reflect on the fact that the English language is an incredible, complex, and ever-changing thing, and maybe, just maybe, your time spent studying it in Ms. Stowe’s ELA class wasn’t such a waste of time after all.
In the summer of 2003, my dad came home from work carrying a few spindly twigs in a bucket, grinning broadly and telling my mom we’d never have to buy raspberries again. I eyed the shoots in disbelief. I’d seen my mother’s father on the farm, mowing down hay that stood taller than those twigs. There were only a few wilting leaves clinging desperately to the fragile branches.
My grandma, humoring her son, obligingly cleared a spot for them in the garden while I sat on the ground doing my Latin homework. Then we forgot about them. They grew a bit over the years, but never bore fruit and were constantly in the way of our other vegetables. Gradually, they were moved closer and closer to the margins of the garden until they finally found a permanent home along the fence.
My grandma continued to keep an eye on them. She’s always been the gardener in our family. I’m usually the one who works with her, but I have neither the skills nor determination needed to manage the garden on my own. Trust me, I tried. I once spent an entire paycheck, the financial equivalent of twenty hours sweeping floors and buttering popcorn at the local movie theatre, on seeds and garden supplies. I prepared and planted in a fit of enthusiasm only to have my entire yield destroyed by rabbits and the weeds that I was too lazy to pluck out when they were small.
Under my grandma’s eye, though, those raspberry bushes flourished. During the summer of my senior year in high school, by which time we had all completely forgotten about that bucket of spindly twigs, my grandma walked into the kitchen and proudly plunked down a jam jar full of the bright red fruit.
I stared mutely at the jar for a few moments before asking, stupidly, “We have raspberries?”
We didn’t have many that summer, but we did have a few. And the next summer we had more, and the following summer even more than that. My mom started making raspberry jam and I froze some in Ziploc bags to add to smoothies. Of course, picking them was a bit of a challenge. My older brother absolutely refused to have anything to do with them. He had spent the summer after his fifteenth birthday picking raspberries at a local farm to earn money for a BMX bike, and was so traumatized by the experience that he won’t even eat a raspberry. That left my younger sister and I to battle the briers and the birds that had made their nests in the tangled thicket.
After eight years of unchecked growth, the bushes were so out of hand that we had to go around the fence and into our neighbor’s yard to harvest the berries on the far side. My sister and I would come back inside, our arms covered with tiny scratches, the berries in our buckets matching the drops of blood beading on our skin. We had more berries than we knew what to do with, but it was obvious that the crop was fading a little. Grandma announced that come the following spring, it would be time to tame the raspberry patch.
When my grandma decides something must be done, it gets done. That’s why, one afternoon in May, only weeks from my college graduation, I found myself facing the raspberry bushes, wearing pajama pants and gardening gloves and still groggy from my aborted nap. My grandma had already been hacking at the dead growth for an hour and was tackling our neighbor’s hemlock shrubs, encroaching on our side of the fence. She handed me the long-handled pruning shears and told me to get cracking, citing her severe pine allergies as reason enough to avoid the job. I was left alone as she went to tend the rhubarb in the garden, muttering that she doesn’t even like raspberries.
I obediently hacked at the overgrown shrubs, thinking of my neighbor who used to mow his lawn every other day before he fell ill. The sun was hot on my bare shoulders as I lopped off the tops of the thorny stalks. I hauled the debris to the burn pile in the middle of the garden and silently wondered if I would even be around to pick these raspberries this summer. In a few weeks, I would be set free, rudderless, and expected to make it on my own. I wasn’t sure I could.
It was bittersweet, remembering last summer when I had sat on the ground, the dry grass pricking the back of my legs, and gently pulled the ripe fruits from the branches. It was soothingly simple, cupping the berry in my fingers and tugging gently to test its resistance. I could tell immediately how ripe the berry was by how easily it released from the stem. I thought of my sister Emily sitting beside me, whining about the possibility of getting weird tan lines from sitting in the hot sun. My mom standing over her largest soup pot filled with molten jam, her lips stained red from sampling. It’s going to be hard to move on from all this.
Of course, raspberries are known for their vigorous propagation. They send forth new shoots with a rapidity that dismays my grandma and delights me. They’re cut back every year in early spring, but recover by high summer. I suppose if raspberries can do it, so can I.
© Copyright. All rights reserved.
We need your consent to load the translations
We use a third-party service to translate the website content that may collect data about your activity. Please review the details in the privacy policy and accept the service to view the translations.