OK, zoomer

9.9

A joking or rude reply people use to dismiss a young person, often from Generation Z

idiom
/oʊˈkeɪ ˈzuːmər/

Slur

: [OFENSIVO] vale, zoomer

After her enthusiastic talk about TikTok, her older coworker said, 'OK, zoomer.'

Examples

He shrugged off the criticism with a playful 'OK, zoomer.'
Don't worry about it, OK, zoomer!
Whenever someone struggles with new technology, she jokes, 'OK, zoomer.'
Sometimes I feel old when I hear OK, zoomer used in conversations.
When his grandma asked him how to use Snapchat, he laughed and replied, 'OK, zoomer!'
She rolled her eyes and said, 'OK, zoomer,' when her friend exaggerated the importance of social media.
He playfully teased his younger sibling, saying, 'OK, zoomer,' after they explained a TikTok trend.

Synonyms

kiddo

vsOK, zoomer

Baby Talk

171 7.2

A friendly, informal way to call a child or young person

is used humorously or dismissively for young people often referring to a particular generation

Surface Forms

zoomer main

Morphology

OK, + zoomer

The phrase literally combines 'OK' (an acknowledgement) with 'zoomer' (a slang label for a member of Generation Z), so a learner who knows both words can infer it's addressing or referring to a young person. However, the common pragmatic use is sarcastic or dismissive, and that attitudinal/genre-specific nuance is not fully predictable from the constituents alone, requiring sociolinguistic knowledge of recent slang.

Etymology

OK, zoomer started as a playful reply to the saying OK, boomer, swapping boomer, meaning an older person, for zoomer, meaning a young Gen Z person. So people use OK, zoomer to mean 'a young person' or to say something joking or a little rude about them.