By Nayanika Samanta
Kolkata, Feb 14 (.) From ‘situationship’ to ‘cushioning’, a stream of new dating expressions has entered the everyday conversation of today’s young generation – the GenZ – mirroring how romance is increasingly shaped by digital culture.
While ‘situationship’ denotes a relationship without clear labels or commitment, cushioning is a short-term for dating a lot of people simultaneously. Similarly, ‘ghosting’ has nothing to do with any apparition, but is actually the GenZ lingo to describe the act of suddenly ending all communication and contact without a proper closure.
Then again, there is the word ‘breadcrumbing’, referring to the act of giving a person enough to keep them interested but never to actually commit. Another popular term is ‘love bombing’ defined as showering a person with excessive affection and gifts in the early days of a relationship to create dependence and control.
Dorina Bhattacharjee, 25, a creative professional, said these lingos are largely Gen Z–coined expressions that gained traction due to social media. “Today’s teenagers who are entering the romantic phase in their lives are partially influenced by these terms. They are the ones who pick up such lingos and adapt to them.”
Tirthankar Das, 27, a Genz journalist, said many of these terms resemble what earlier generations might have called casual relationships or sub-categories of ‘friends with benefits’.
Monikering GenZs as “fickle-minded”, Das emphasised they caption bios as “looking for long-term relationships”,” but they are the ones running behind one-night stands and something casual”.
As the relationship dictionary now gets enormous with the constant bombing of new terms, which in turn triggers questions about the younger generation’s understanding of love, experts provide a more pragmatic picture.
Linguist Aditi Ghosh, a Calcutta University professor, believes the surge in modern dating terms is not evidence of superficiality, but of linguistic evolution. Rather, it fills what linguistics calls a lexical gap, situations or experiences for which no precise word previously existed.
“Every generation, especially the younger people — they want to use some kind of stylised language; they want to use slang; they want to kind of build their identity around a special kind of language,” she told ..
While many assume Gen Z slang is heavily metaphorical, she suggests that these words primarily serve to identify experiences that previously went unnamed.
“The idea of romance was popularised by Victorian novels. Prior to that, romance used to mean something else. You just had to marry and reproduce; romance had nothing to do with it.”
In her view, this generation hasn’t lost its sense of romance. According to her, the uncertainty seen in modern relationships reflects shifting social values, not a lack of emotional depth.
“The idea that language shapes how we think, explored by George Orwell in the novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ shows how naming experiences helps us understand them better. Social media has the process of the spreading of such terms. Naming gives psychological power,” said Ghosh.
Sociologist Dr Ananda Kar, a professor at Kalyani University, believes the shift in dating language reflects larger social changes. He linked the expansion of relationship labels to two major forces: individual freedom and economic freedom.
“So, on the one hand is the right to have my own identity, the right to select my partner with my choice of identity, and the right to express my love. On the other side is the market economy. So these two factors have changed the way people love and the way they celebrate the festival of love.
“But another issue has surged, that is the expression of love is getting commodified. Because there is a risk that it may become just another kind of shopping festival. And as a result, the idea of seriousness in love may get diluted, particularly because of show-off and commodification.”
As careers become more mobile and urban life grows busier, sustaining long-term partnerships has become more complex. “Giving quality time to your partner is becoming difficult in an age when some people suggest working 70 or 90 hours a week, and these types of demands are increasing, which presents serious challenges,” Kar told ..
Clinical psychologist Dr Pompi Banerjee, working at Bodhicitta Clinic, however, does not view behaviours like’ ‘ghosting’ or ‘breadcrumbing’ as new.
“For my parents’ generation, as well as mine, ghosting would have just seemed very rude and extremely painful. But for younger people, it has become almost an alternative to ignoring without really communicating to the other person. I do think this trend we are seeing in terms of language should really make us question how the younger generations are experiencing attachment and what they are understanding. What is care? What is love?”
According to Banerjee, these dating patterns are often shaped by deeper emotional factors, including insecurity and attachment tendencies.
But Psychologist Dr Indrani Basu feels that despite changing trends, India’s emphasis on long-term commitment and family stability remains strong.
“I can see for the next 10-15 years that they’re coming back to that family setup. So, I think the prevailing culture sometimes takes over’. . . .