Filipinos are known for coming up with slang words to describe things that we normally don’t have terms for yet. ‘Hipon’ is used to describe someone with a hot body, but an unattractive face, for example; while ‘talikodgenic’ is used to describe someone who only looks good from behind.
Well, it seems our terms have caught the fancy of BBC Two, the second flagship channel of the United Kingdom’s British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). They have put one of terms – ‘layogenic’ – in the spotlight as their ‘Word of the Day’.
In a recent Facebook post, they have described ‘layogenic’ as ‘a person who is attractive from a distance, but not from close up’:
Sadly, they didn’t mention the origin of the word, but ‘layogenic’ has also been featured in an article entitled ’14 Wonderful Word with No English Equivalent’ on mentalfloss.com – the term comes from the Filipino word ‘layo’ for far and the ‘genic’ comes from ‘photogenic’.
I don’t really agree with it not having an English equivalent, though, since Cher in ‘Clueless’ called people like that a ‘full-on Monet’. :p
Still pretty cool to see a Filipino word featured as ‘Word of the Day’! What’s your favorite Filipino slang word?
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