Everyone knows the Walt Disney cartoon anthropomorphic dog who is clumsy and a bit foolish. Young Germans have adopted the term to describe someone who is silly, eccentric or awkward — usually in an affectionate way. It has now been named German Youth Word of the Year 2023.

The English verb "smash" was chosen as German Youth Word of the Year 2022. It roughly means "starting something with someone," "picking someone up" or "having sex with someone." It comes from the dating game app "Smash or Pass," where potential partners are either accepted as a "smash" by swiping right or rejected as a "pass" by swiping left, inspired by the dating app Tinder.

The English word "cringe" was selected as the German Youth Word of the Year 2021. Just like in English, German teens use it to describe a person or situation they find extremely embarrassing. But the German language also has its own term to express the feeling of being embarrassed because someone else has embarrassed themselves (without noticing): "fremdschämen" — secondhand embarrassment.

The German Youth Word of the Year in 2020 was also an English word, "lost." German teens don't use it in the sense of having lost their way, but to express a lack of perspective, or of not knowing what to do. They might also use the term in a math class for instance as a way of saying "I don't get it." (2019 marked a year when the "Youth Word of the Year" was not chosen.)

Man or woman of honor: that's the German Youth Word of the Year for 2018 (no word was selected in 2019). It refers to a person you can always count on and who's loyal to his friends and family. It can also be used ironically as an insult, when someone claims to have strong principles but doesn't apply them in real life. German rappers often use "Ehrenmann" in their lyrics.

To be or not to be? Germany's young people would answer Shakespeare's most famous existential question with "I bims," derived from "Ich bin" — I am. It was chosen as the German Youth Word of the Year in 2017.

When a person is flying high and ready to, say, party all night, German teens will highlight this energy by borrowing from US hip-hop slang, literally saying "you're on fly." In English, "I'm so fly" is a rapper way of saying you're cool. It was embodied by the main character in the film "Super Fly" from 1972, with its famous Curtis Mayfield soundtrack.

Do you check your phone while you're walking and run into things? Then apparently you have something in common with German teens. The 2015 German Youth Word of the Year was "Smombie" — a cross between smartphone and zombie. Walking while checking for a new like, follow or message can be hazardous. Perhaps Germany should adopt this phone lane idea spotted in China.

"Läuft bei dir" basically means "things are going well with you." But as with most of the youth words of the year, this one can also contain traces of irony depending on the context. It's perhaps always a question of perspective: Despite the mud, the heavy metal fans in this picture taken at the Wacken open air festival still seem to think everything rocks.

Who's the leader of the pack among your friends? Chances are, they're the babo: that is, the boss, the ringleader, the head honcho. German rapper Haftbefehl (pictured) may also like to see himself as the babo. In 2013, he released a track called "Chabos know who the babo is." While "chabos" (roughly, guys) is derived from Angloromani, babo comes from Turkish.

In 2012, an English abbreviation won German Youth Word of the Year. YOLO stands for You Only Live Once. In that case, live it up. Maybe that means launching your singing career on YouTube, getting a colorful tattoo or just dancing in the streets with your friends.

It's not surprising that teen speak is heavily influenced by the music scene. Swag was borrowed from the American rap scene and made it over to Germany around 2010, becoming popular thanks to Austrian rapper Money Boy's track "Turn My Swag On." If you've got swag, you radiate coolness.

Ever played limbo? Then you know there's a limit to how far down you can go — even if you're really good. "Niveaulimbo" — literally, limbo level — refers to the ever-sinking quality of something. That could be a TV show, a joke or a party that starts getting out of hand.

Combining the words "selfie" and "suicide" and referring to a person who dies while trying to take a selfie, the term has also been used in English for several years. Compared to the people who've taken selfies on top of skyscrapers or while jumping off a cliff, this woman is "relatively" cautious with her selfie attempt on Mount Merapi in Indonesia.

A German verb ending is added to the English term to loot, but young people use "looten" as slang for shopping. Last July in Hamburg, some people applied the term literally during the anti-G20 summit protests.

This one is obviously easy to understand for English speakers: it's the crew, the gang, the posse. "Squad" is used by German teens to refer to an extremely cool group of people — such as these pictured Sapeurs, members of a subculture born in the 1960s in Congo, who like to dress flamboyantly.

Egyptian protesters are on Twitter. Your grandmother is on Facebook. But you don't see why you should be following Instagram influencers. You decide to be the only person in the world to completely avoid social media. You're free to do so, but you must know that in the eyes of German teens, you're "sozialtot" — socially dead.

Already popular in English as a term for "cool," lit has also been adopted in Germany. According to the Urban Dictionary, it was already used by jazz musicians in the 1950s to describe being just drunk enough to play better, without being too wasted. If Billie Holiday (pictured) knew how to get lit at the beginning of her career, her alcoholism also led to her early death at the age of 44.

A combination of "nice" and "Frankenstein," with some distortion of the German superlative form "-sten," "nicenstein" is a term whose invention is attributed to Michael Krogmann, a host of the German livestream channel Rocket Beans TV, popular among the country's youth. Nicenstein means "perfect, fulfilling all wishes" — like this Halloween chihuahua.

The traditional pastime for people who like to sit for longer periods on the throne was to read. The smartphone offers many alternative options, and German teens now have a term for those who take that private time to send text messages: "tacken," which switches the T in "kacken," which means to take a dump.

"Schatz," or treasure, is one of the most popular terms of endearment in German. Those who don't have anyone to call that way are "schatzlos," or single. If you suddenly become treasure-less, remember that things could be worse: Berlin's Bode Museum became the country's laughingstock when thieves popped in one night this year and rolled away with the Big Maple Leaf, a million-dollar Canadian coin.

If you're "schatzlos," you might be using Tinder to find your next match. The German word for minor, "minderjährig," led to a wordplay with the popular dating app's name, as the minimum age to sign up and use Tinder is 18.

Are you the type of person who drifts off while the TV's on? Then you like to "napflix." German youths didn't come up with this one, either. A video platform called Napflix apes the Netflix logo and offers footage celebrating "monotony and repetition" specially selected for your siesta.