William Safire – a 77 year-old Times columnist primarily known for his political writing and old timey ways – has apparently been hanging around outside the NYU dorms, because he’s bringing us the straight dope on the phatest, freshest lingo coming out of the kids’ mouths these days. So if you’re feeling a little sketchy about how to speak the New Slang. There’s so much hilarious goodness that I suggest you read the entire piece, but here are a few of my favorite parts:

“Ah-ite.” The meaning is “O.K.” The sound is an amalgam of all and right, which used to sound like “aw-rite” but now is compressed into a sliding “a’ight,” as the teen-slanguist Fred Lynch transcribes it.

Well “teen-slanguist Fred Lynch” ain’t just a’ight, yo. He’s exactly right supa-f*cking tight in the dynamite, a’ight!

Word-blending is big in campuspeak. “He’s sort of a nerd, but he’s just so adorkable” combines adorable with dork, the amalgam defined as “endearing though socially inept” by Prof. Connie Eble of the department of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mos def, yo. Though if you were truly hip to the fresh, you’d call them word mash-ups. Still, you’re totes adorkable.

Among the relatively new slang words: stella, “good-looking female,” from stellar, “starlike,” improbably influenced by the shouted name of Stanley Kowalski’s wife in Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar Named Desire.” A synonym is shorty or shawty, imported from vintage hip-hop for “girlfriend of any height.” Such attractiveness is the opposite of the fast-fading butterface (“Great body, but her face. . . .”), and a less-than-good-looking male or female is a blockamore, who “only looks good from a block or more.”

Shawty? Jesus Bill, are you just TRYING to make us pee our pants laughing?

(Thanks to Brian Palmer for the tip.)