We try to pick out the rare fantastic websites - every week a new website put on show. This week: How to become even more fluent in the English language.
Y
o bro' - I lol'd my ass off when da cracka called me da nizzle. How much of the latter sentence did you actually understand? Although this is surely not a question that involves any kind of faith, I still believe you couldn't get the meaning. Well, one could just look up the words in a dictionary, right? Good luck with that. You'll definitely need a special dictionary and since we are living in the 21th century, you don't even have to buy one.
Urban Dictionary is a collection of slang, working class as well as colloquial words, phrases and expressions. The whole thing works just like a wiki, i.e. everyone can add and change content which is definitions of everyday words in this case. Just as a little site note, did you know that "wiki wiki" is Hawaiian for quick but nowadays mostly used to express the action of looking up information on the web? Guess where I got that from.
Looks like any other online reference, doesn't it?
A growing list of 3,202,545 definitions Users don't even have to register in order to put their definitions in the dictionary; thereby, Urban Dictionary has gathered over 3.2 million entries since 1999. The content is checked by volunteer editors but since the sense of the project is o "define your world," any changes about the postings would be counterproductive. Therefore, as long as the definitions agree with the terms of service, the content is kept the way the anonymous users post it. Still, some kind of quality control has to be put in. In order to give the audience an idea of how well the definitions go together with the words, all users are encouraged to rate the entries. Of course, one word can have more than one definition; therefore, every single definition can be rated individually and thereby goes up or down the list depending on the votes it receives.
The homepage always comes up with new and interesting expressions. Just to give you an example, here are some words users posted on Urban dictionary:
berm (rating 42 pro vs. 7 con) combination of beer and sperm, as relating to the odor of a sorority girl after a hard night's partying. "Yeah she was hot, but when she talked you could smell the berm."
He might understand what you're saying but he might not be happy about it.
ray (rating 124 pro 63 con) Refers to a male whose appearance is fresh, hip and shiny like (x-)rays. "This ray is getting every woman he wants."When to use street language?Obviously, these expressions are street lingo and should therefore not be used in any essays, term papers or stories that are supposedly to be graded by any school or university teachers. Thus, you could use these words as direct speech in one of your future stories, you'll still have to watch out since most of the entries are highly provocative and might insult the readers. Although using the words in your writings yourself might be dangerous, Urban Dictionary will surely help you understand chats with natives or the blogs of your American friends more easily.
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Da der Microsoft Internet Explorer nicht den weltweiten Web-Standards entspricht, wird WOOLING.NET im Internet Explorer bis Version 6 noch fehlerhaft dargestellt. Alle Fehler konnten wir noch nicht beheben. Das betrifft vor allem Textausrichtung, Linien und Abstände. Um WOOLING.NET in voller Schönheit genießen zu können, legen wir euch ans Herz, den Internet Explorer zu aktualisieren oder am besten gleich kostenlos zu 
