Modern Dating Terms, Defined

A match you’ve been texting for three weeks says she’s “not looking for anything serious, just seeing where it goes,” and a friend tells you that’s a situationship. Another friend says it sounds more like breadcrumbing. Both words are in Merriam-Webster, and they don’t mean the same thing. Plenty of people couldn’t say how: in one study of Spanish adults aged 18 to 40, half of the participants didn’t know the terms breadcrumbing and ghosting. Modern dating terms - the dating slang of group chats, profiles and 1 a.m. texts - mostly name one of six situations: the undefined early stage, mixed signals, how things end (and restart), manipulation, quick judgments about a match, and the arrangement itself. Below, 60 terms are defined in a line each and grouped that way, with sources.

Definitions are editorial; dictionary entries, studies and search data are linked inline. Last reviewed: September 27, 2026. See how we source and review.

Most dating slang names one of six situations

Most modern dating slang describes one of six situations: the undefined stage before commitment, mixed signals, endings and reappearances, manipulation, quick judgments about a match, and the type of arrangement two people have. Find your situation in the list, or go straight to a word in the index below it.

• Before it’s official - talking stage, situationship, DTR, soft launch, cuffing season.
• Mixed signals - breadcrumbing, benching, cushioning, orbiting, pocketing.
• Endings and reappearances - ghosting, slow fade, zombieing, haunting, hoovering.
• Warning signs - love bombing, gaslighting, future faking, negging, catfishing.
• Flags and icks - red flag, green flag, beige flag, the ick.
• Arrangements and labels - friends with benefits, ethical non-monogamy, polyamory, sneaky link, DINK.

Dating terms and meanings, A to Z. Each term links to its full entry.

What Americans look up most. Search data shows which words send people looking for a definition. The meanings searched most often are about manipulation (gaslighting, love bombing) and about the shape of a relationship (FWB, ENM, situationship). People aren’t chasing trends so much as looking for a name for what is happening to them.

Google Ads estimate via DataForSEO, September 2026. Figures are Google Ads monthly search estimates for “[term] meaning” in the U.S., retrieved via DataForSEO on September 27, 2026; some acronyms also have non-dating meanings.

If you came here for the 3-3-3, 7-7-7 or 72-hour rule, those are rules of thumb, not slang. They’re explained in our guide to dating rules.

Dating got a new vocabulary because most of it now happens in writing

New dating terms keep appearing because so much early dating now happens in apps, texts and social feeds, where behavior is visible, repeatable - and needs a name. Most of the new words describe something that happens on a screen.

The scale is large. In a 2022 survey, Pew Research Center found that three in ten U.S. adults had used a dating site or app, including 53% of adults under 30 and 37% of those 30 to 49. One in ten partnered adults met their current partner that way; among partnered adults under 30, it was one in five.

The apps are not the only route. Some people still meet through friends, and some through a matchmaker; for a side-by-side look at how that route differs, see Velin Privé’s comparison of matchmaking and dating apps.

Writing makes behavior countable. A message marked read with no reply, a like with no text, a story viewed at 1 a.m.: each is a small act that leaves a trace, and once enough people notice the same trace, someone names it. Much of the newest online dating jargon comes from Gen Z, roughly today’s teens and twentysomethings, and much of it spreads through TikTok, the way delulu did.

Dictionaries have been keeping score. Collins Dictionary put ghosting on its 2015 list of words of the year. Oxford Languages shortlisted orbiting in 2018. Merriam-Webster made gaslighting its 2022 Word of the Year after lookups rose 1,740%. Oxford’s 2023 pick was rizz, with situationship among the finalists, and Merriam-Webster added cuffing season to its dictionary in 2026.

“style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner”— Oxford University Press, defining rizz, 2023

The words also shape behavior. In its Year in Swipe report for 2022, Tinder said it saw a 49% increase in members adding “situationship” to their bios, with young singles telling the app they preferred situationships “as a way to develop a relationship with less pressure.”

Not everyone speaks the language, though. In the Spanish study mentioned above, roughly two in ten adults had experienced or initiated ghosting in the past year, yet half didn’t know the terms ghosting and breadcrumbing. A glossary like this one is less about keeping up than about making sure two people mean the same thing by the same dating words.

Before it’s official: words for the undefined stage

The early, unlabeled stretch of dating has the richest vocabulary. Talking stage, situationship and delusionship describe how defined things are; DTR, exclusive and a hard launch describe how they become official.

Talking stage

Talking stage is the early stretch of texting, calls and a few dates before either person has said what this is. It’s a normal phase, not a problem in itself. What separates it from a situationship is direction: a talking stage is heading toward a decision, while a situationship has stalled without one. For a sense of how long the early stage usually lasts, see our timeline guide.

In use: “We’re still in the talking stage, so I haven’t mentioned him to my family.”

Situationship

Situationship is a romantic or sexual relationship whose members, in Merriam-Webster’s words, “have not formally defined it or officially committed to it.” The dictionary says the word “emerged by at least the late 2000s and spread in the mid-2010s.” In 2022 Tinder reported a 49% jump in members putting it in their bios, and a year later Oxford made it a Word of the Year finalist. Read more: what a situationship is and how people get out of one.

In use: “We’ve been seeing each other since June, but it’s still a situationship.”

Delusionship

Delusionship is a relationship that exists mostly in one person’s head: real feelings for a connection the other person hasn’t signaled. It can look like planning around someone who replies once a week, or reading meaning into a single story view. The word borrows from delulu (below), and people often use it about themselves, with a wink. A useful test is one question: has the other person said or done anything that points the same way? If all the evidence sits on your side of the chat, it’s probably a delusionship.

In use: “He liked one photo and I’ve already picked the wedding venue. Total delusionship.”

Delulu

Delulu is slang for delusional, now often used affectionately for bold, even unrealistic, self-confidence. Merriam-Webster traces it to K-pop fan communities in the early 2010s, where it poked at fans’ far-fetched hopes about idols. From 2023, young women on TikTok reclaimed it as a badge of confidence, summed up in “delulu is the solulu.” In dating it usually means hoping against the signals, and it’s often said with self-irony.

DTR (define the relationship)

DTR, short for “define the relationship,” is the conversation where two people say out loud whether they’re exclusive and what they’re calling each other. It’s the usual exit from a talking stage or a situationship, in either direction. Our guide to dating timelines covers when couples usually have that conversation.

Exclusive

Exclusive means two people have agreed to stop dating anyone else. Many couples treat it as the step before “boyfriend,” “girlfriend” or “partner”; others use the words interchangeably, which is exactly why it’s worth asking.

Not to be confused with: a committed relationship. For some couples exclusive and committed are the same step; for others, one comes a few weeks before the other.

Soft launch and hard launch

Soft launch is hinting at a new romance on social media without showing who it is; a hard launch is the public announcement. Merriam-Webster defines a soft launch as “an act of hinting about a new romance on social media,” such as a photo with someone’s hand in the frame and no name attached, and a hard launch as “an emphatic public declaration of romantic involvement.” The romantic sense borrows from business, where a soft launch is a quiet release to a limited audience.

Cuffing season

Cuffing season is the colder part of the year, when single people look for a short-term partner to spend it with. Merriam-Webster puts it roughly from October through March, winding down around Valentine’s Day, and finds the earliest print uses in college newspapers in 2011. The “cuffs” are handcuffs, as in being attached to someone. The phrase made it into the dictionary in 2026, so if you’re reading this in October, the season, and the entry, are both fairly fresh.

Rizz

Rizz is charm, or the ability to attract a romantic partner. Oxford University Press believes it’s a shortening of “charisma,” taken from the middle of the word, and notes that streamer Kai Cenat is widely credited with popularizing it in 2022. It also works as a verb: to “rizz up” someone is to charm or chat them up.

In use: “He’s got rizz, I’ll give him that.”

Slow burn

Slow burn is a connection that builds gradually, often out of friendship, rather than starting with instant chemistry. It’s usually said as reassurance: no fireworks on the first date doesn’t mean no future.

Textationship

Textationship is a connection that lives almost entirely in text messages and rarely turns into dates. The messages can be daily and warm. What’s missing is time in the same room.

Nanoship

Nanoship is a very short romantic connection, sometimes a single evening or a weekend, that feels intense while it lasts. It’s a newer term, and its use is still settling.

Mixed signals: terms for someone who is only half in

Dating terms like breadcrumbing, benching, cushioning and orbiting all describe partial attention, but they differ in intent: breadcrumbing keeps you interested, benching keeps you in reserve, cushioning keeps a backup while committed elsewhere, and orbiting watches without talking. Left long enough, this is often the point when mixed signals turn into a situationship.

Breadcrumbing

Breadcrumbing is sending just enough attention - a flirty text here, a “we should hang out” there - to keep someone interested, with no plan to go further. Merriam-Webster dates the word to about 2010 and describes it as signaling lasting interest “without any true intent to pursue a relationship.” It isn’t harmless: in a study of 626 Spanish adults, those who had been breadcrumbed reported lower life satisfaction and more loneliness and helplessness.

Not to be confused with: benching, where the person does want you around, just as a backup.

Benching

Benching is keeping someone in reserve: enough contact to keep them available, not enough to move forward, while looking for someone you like more. The metaphor comes from sports - you’re on the team, just not playing. It tends to show up as friendly replies, the occasional plan that falls through at the last minute, and a burst of attention whenever you pull back. The difference from breadcrumbing is subtle but real: a breadcrumber wants your attention, a bencher wants an option. Either way, a specific invitation with a day and a time usually shows which one you’re dealing with.

Cushioning

Cushioning is keeping a few flirtations going while in a relationship, as a soft landing in case it ends. The signs are ordinary on their own: a dating app never quite deleted, a “just friends” chat that’s warmer than the person admits, an ex who still gets late-night replies. Together, they add up to a plan B.

Not to be confused with: micro-cheating. Cushioning is a backup plan; micro-cheating is crossing the boundaries a couple has set, whether or not anyone is being lined up.

Roster dating

Roster dating is dating several people casually at once, none of them exclusively; the “roster” is the list. It isn’t necessarily a problem. It becomes one when someone on the roster believes they’re the only name on it.

Orbiting

Orbiting is withdrawing from direct contact with someone while still watching, and sometimes reacting to, their social media. Oxford Languages put it on its 2018 Word of the Year shortlist, defining it as “the action of abruptly withdrawing from direct communication with someone while still monitoring, and sometimes responding to, their activity on social media.” Oxford credits writer Anna Iovine, who named it in an article for the blog Man Repeller. The giveaway is the mismatch: no texts, but every story viewed within the hour.

Not to be confused with: haunting, which is occasional rather than constant.

Pocketing (also stashing)

Pocketing, also called stashing, is keeping a partner hidden from friends, family and social media while the relationship carries on. Early on, that can be perfectly reasonable: some people are private, some are in the middle of a divorce, some want to be sure before the introductions start. It becomes a signal when months pass, you’ve met no one in their life, and questions about it get vagueness rather than a reason.

Dry texting

Dry texting is replying with short, slow messages that give the other person nothing to answer (“lol,” “k,” “nice”). Sometimes it’s simply how someone texts. It’s worth noticing when the contrast is sharp: lively in person, flat on the phone.

Left on read

Left on read means your message shows as read and no reply comes. It’s the small, visible kind of silence that read receipts made possible.

Curving

Curving is turning someone down indirectly, with vague, delayed or noncommittal replies instead of a clear no. It spares the person doing it an awkward sentence and leaves the other one guessing.

Monkey branching

Monkey branching is lining up the next relationship before leaving the current one, the way a monkey grabs the next branch before letting go of the last. It’s a newer term in dating coverage and, like cushioning, it’s about always having somewhere to land.

Endings and reappearances: how people leave, and how some come back

Ghosting ends contact all at once, a slow fade ends it gradually, and zombieing, submarining and hoovering describe people who come back - from a casual “hey stranger” to a deliberate attempt to pull an ex back in.

Ghosting

Ghosting is ending contact abruptly and without explanation - in Merriam-Webster’s words, “abruptly cutting off all contact with someone … usually without explanation.” Collins Dictionary put it on its 2015 list of words of the year. It’s common: in studies of about 750 people described by psychologist Gili Freedman, 23% had ghosted a romantic partner and 23% had been ghosted by one. Those ghosted reported more hurt and loneliness; ghosters reported more guilt, but also more relief.

Slow fade

Slow fade is ending things by replying less and less until contact stops, instead of saying it’s over. It’s ghosting in installments: the message is the same, it just takes longer to arrive.

Soft ghosting

Soft ghosting is reacting to a message - a heart, a thumbs-up - instead of answering it, and letting the conversation end there.

Fizzling

Fizzling describes a connection that fades because both people lose interest, without either one deciding to end it. Unlike a slow fade, nobody is doing the fading.

Cloaking

Cloaking is standing someone up for a date and blocking them on every app, so they can’t even ask what happened. Wikipedia’s entry on ghosting lists it as a related behavior. It’s one more reason to meet new matches in public places.

Caspering

Caspering is the friendly-ghost version of ending things: a short, kind message saying you’re not interested, instead of disappearing.

Zombieing

Zombieing is an ex or a former match reappearing, often after months of silence, and trying to pick things up again. Psychologist Theresa DiDonato describes it as “an ex reappearing and resurrecting a relationship,” and notes that unlike haunting, it “needn’t be cyclical or half-hearted” - it can be a full on-again. The classic opening is a “hey stranger” text with no mention of the silence. Whether to answer depends less on the message than on why they left.

Not to be confused with: submarining, where the person acts as if they never left at all.

Haunting

Haunting is lingering at the edges of someone’s life after going quiet - a story view, a like on an old photo - without really coming back. DiDonato contrasts it with zombieing, which can be a full return.

Not to be confused with: orbiting, which starts right after contact ends and continues; haunting comes and goes.

Submarining

Submarining is disappearing, then resurfacing as if nothing happened, with no explanation for the absence. It’s close to zombieing; the difference is that the person never acknowledges being gone.

Hoovering

Hoovering is trying to pull someone back into a toxic or abusive relationship, named after the vacuum cleaner. Psych Central describes it as manipulative behavior meant to “suck” or “hoover” someone back, and notes that it “isn’t a clinically recognized or formally defined term, and there’s little research on it.” If a return comes with guilt, pressure or threats, it belongs with the warning signs below.

Conscious uncoupling

Conscious uncoupling is a breakup handled deliberately, with both people aiming for respect and closure rather than blame.

Warning signs: terms that describe manipulation or deception

A handful of dating terms describe behavior that can be manipulative or abusive - love bombing, gaslighting, future faking, negging - or deceptive, like catfishing. What separates them from ordinary enthusiasm or awkwardness is a pattern, not a single moment.

Love bombing

Love bombing is overwhelming someone with attention and affection early on in order to gain influence over them. The National Domestic Violence Hotline quotes Psychology Today’s definition, “an attempt to influence another person with over-the-top displays of attention and affection,” and calls it a form of emotional abuse. Its signs include “soulmate” talk within weeks, exaggerated compliments, lavish gifts and constant messages. The phrase was coined in the 1970s by members of the Unification Church in the U.S., according to Wikipedia. In a 2017 study of 484 college students, love bombing was linked to narcissistic tendencies and lower self-esteem.

Intensity alone isn’t love bombing. The pattern is what matters: pressure to commit fast, then a sudden turn cold when you set a boundary.

Gaslighting

Gaslighting is manipulating someone into doubting their own memory, perception or judgment. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.” The word comes from a 1938 play, and the film based on it, in which a husband insists to his wife that the lights are not dimming. In dating it sounds like being told, again and again, that you’re remembering wrong or overreacting.

Future faking

Future faking is promising a shared future - trips, moving in, meeting the family - to win commitment now, with no real plan to follow through. Everyone daydreams out loud sometimes. The difference is that these promises never turn into steps: no dates booked, no introductions made.

Negging

Negging is a deliberately backhanded compliment meant to knock someone’s confidence so they’ll seek the speaker’s approval. The term was coined and promoted by pickup artists, per Wikipedia.

In use: “‘You’re pretty smart for someone who watches reality TV’ is a neg.”

Catfishing

Catfishing is creating a fake online identity to deceive someone, often a romantic interest. The name comes from the 2010 documentary Catfish, and MTV’s Catfish: The TV Show has aired since 2012, per Wikipedia. The stakes can be financial: the Federal Trade Commission reports that nearly 60% of people who lost money to a romance scam in 2025 said it started on social media. A request for money or gifts from someone you’ve never met in person is a reason to stop.

Kittenfishing

Kittenfishing is making yourself look better on a dating app than in life, through old or edited photos and inflated profile details. Dictionary.com says Hinge coined the term in 2017 as a milder cousin of catfishing: a kitten is just a small cat.

Not to be confused with: catfishing, which is a false identity rather than a flattering one.

Chatfishing

Chatfishing is using AI chatbots to write dating messages in a way that misleads the other person about who, or what, they’re talking to. Outlets such as VICE were covering it by October 2025. It’s growing alongside AI use in general: in the 2025 Singles in America study by Match and the Kinsey Institute, 26% of 5,001 U.S. singles said they use AI to enhance their dating lives. Using AI to polish a profile isn’t chatfishing. The problem starts when the person on the other end doesn’t know.

Micro-cheating

Micro-cheating is a small act that crosses a partner’s boundaries without being an affair: secret DMs, a dating app never deleted, hiding how often you talk to someone. The term was popularized in the media, apparently by Australian TV personality Melanie Schilling, and scholarship on it is still limited, per Wikipedia. Where the line sits differs from couple to couple, which is why it’s worth saying out loud.

Roaching

Roaching is finding out that the person you’re seeing has been seriously dating several other people without saying so - the idea being that where there’s one, there are more. It’s a newer term. The fix is unglamorous: ask about exclusivity before assuming it.

If it feels like more than a bad date

Love bombing, gaslighting and hoovering can be part of an abusive relationship. To reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline, call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), text START to 88788 or chat at thehotline.org. For young people, loveisrespect answers at 1-866-331-9474, or text LOVEIS to 22522. If you’re in danger right now, call 911.

Flags and icks: the shorthand for sizing up a match

Flags are a color code for a partner’s traits - red for a warning, green for a good sign, beige for something neutral but odd - while “the ick” names a sudden loss of attraction, often over something small.

Red flag

Red flag is a trait or behavior that signals a real problem, such as disrespect, dishonesty or control. One red flag is information; a pattern of them is an answer.

Green flag

Green flag is a sign of healthy, trustworthy behavior: consistency, clear plans, respect for boundaries. Green flags are quieter than red ones, which is why they’re easy to overlook.

Beige flag

Beige flag is, in Merriam-Webster’s definition, “a neutral sign or trait in a potential romantic partner” - neither a turn-on nor a turnoff, just memorable. The dictionary’s examples include a partner who claps when the plane lands and a profile that says “I love to travel.” Harmless, and often the detail you end up telling friends about.

Yellow, orange and pink flags

Yellow, orange and pink flags are informal in-between shades: yellow or orange usually means a caution worth watching, pink a minor concern. Usage varies from person to person, so if someone uses one, ask what they mean.

The ick

The ick is a sudden loss of attraction to someone, often triggered by something small. Wikipedia traces the phrase to a 1998 episode of Ally McBeal; Love Island contestant Olivia Attwood popularized it in 2017, and by 2020 it was all over TikTok. Researchers have since studied it. In a 2025 study of 125 single adults, higher disgust sensitivity and perfectionism were linked to experiencing icks.

“Women were more likely than men to be familiar with the term (63 % vs. 39 %) and to have experienced the ick (75 % vs. 57 %).”— Collisson, Saunders and Yin, Personality and Individual Differences, 2025

The researchers treat the ick as a threshold in choosing a partner, and thresholds cut both ways. Sometimes an ick flags a real mismatch; sometimes the bar is set too high to clear.

Arrangements and labels: what people call the setup

A second family of terms describes the arrangement itself - how serious, how exclusive and how public - from friends with benefits and a sneaky link to ethical non-monogamy and living apart together.

Friends with benefits (FWB)

Friends with benefits (FWB) are friends who have sex without being in a romantic relationship. It isn’t a fringe arrangement: in a 2009 study of 125 undergraduates, 60% said they’d had one.

Casual dating

Casual dating is dating without an expectation of commitment or exclusivity. It works best when both people are using the same definition.

Hookup

Hookup is a casual sexual encounter; the word is deliberately vague about how far things went.

Sneaky link

Sneaky link is someone you see secretly, usually for sex, and keep out of your public life.

Netflix and chill

Netflix and chill is an invitation to hang out at home that’s widely understood to mean sex, not television.

Ethical non-monogamy (ENM)

Ethical non-monogamy (ENM) is an umbrella term for relationships in which everyone involved openly agrees that other romantic or sexual connections are allowed. It covers polyamory and open relationships, among other setups, and on dating profiles it usually appears as the acronym.

Polyamory

Polyamory is having intimate relationships with more than one person, with everyone’s knowledge and consent - Wikidata describes it as “intimate relationships between more than two persons with the consent and knowledge of all persons involved.”

Not to be confused with: open relationship, which usually allows sex with others but keeps one primary couple.

Open relationship

Open relationship is a committed couple that agrees sex, and sometimes dating, with other people is allowed. There’s usually one primary relationship at the center.

Relationship anarchy

Relationship anarchy is the belief that relationships shouldn’t be governed by rules other than the ones the people in them agree on - in Wikidata’s wording, “unbound by rules except those with a mutual agreement.” There’s no automatic ranking of partners over friends.

Living apart together (LAT)

Living apart together (LAT) is a committed couple who choose to keep separate homes.

DINK

DINK stands for “dual income, no kids”: a couple where both partners work and neither has children, often by choice.

Female-led relationship (FLR)

Female-led relationship (FLR) is a relationship in which both partners agree that the woman takes the lead in decisions.

Body count

Body count is slang for “the number of sexual partners a person has had,” as Merriam-Webster defines it.

Dating acronyms, decoded

Dating profiles and texts lean on relationship acronyms; the most common describe what someone is looking for (LTR, STR, FWB, ONS, NSA) or how they live (DINK, LAT, ENM).

Acronyms in a profile are the fastest read on what someone wants. When one is unfamiliar, or could mean two things, asking beats guessing.

What the research says about five of these behaviors

Only a few dating terms have been studied directly, but the research that exists is clear on one point: behaviors like ghosting, breadcrumbing and love bombing are common, and they affect people differently than the jokes suggest.

Only a handful of these behaviors have been studied, and the samples are small, often made up of students, and often drawn from one country. Treat the numbers as signals, not as statistics about Americans. For much of the newer slang there’s no research at all yet: scholarship on micro-cheating is still limited, and hoovering isn’t a clinical term.

A word is a starting point, not a verdict

A dating term is useful when it helps you describe a pattern to yourself or a friend, and less useful when it replaces a direct conversation with the person involved.

The words do real work. Half the adults in the Spanish study didn’t know ghosting or breadcrumbing by name, which means two people can live through the same month and describe it in completely different ways. A shared word closes some of that gap.

But a term describes behavior, not a person. One unanswered text isn’t ghosting. One generous week isn’t love bombing. Before a label settles the question, it’s worth running through a short card.

Before you use the label

• Is this a pattern, or one moment?
• Have you said what you want, plainly, at least once?
• Would the other person describe the situation the same way?
• Does the label change what you’ll do next, or only how it feels?
• If it’s about safety rather than mixed signals, do you know who to call?

If your question is “what are we?”, the next two reads are about how people get out of a situationship and how many dates couples usually take before a relationship.

Learn the words, then use the one that matters most: a plain question about what the two of you want.

Frequently asked questions

What are some new slang terms used in dating?

The newest terms with a clear paper trail include chatfishing, using AI to write dating messages, which news outlets were covering by October 2025; beige flag, a neutral quirk in a partner; and delulu, reclaimed on TikTok in 2023. Newer still, with no dictionary entry yet, are roaching, monkey branching and nanoship. Dictionaries lag behind: Merriam-Webster only added cuffing season in 2026.

What are Gen Z dating terms?

The Gen Z dating terms you’re most likely to hear include situationship, talking stage, soft launch and hard launch, rizz, delulu, the ick and beige flag. Two have official recognition: Oxford made rizz its 2023 Word of the Year, and situationship was one of the finalists. Most of them describe the undefined stage before two people commit to each other.

What is a slang word for dating?

There isn’t a single one. For the early stage, people say they’re “talking” or in the talking stage; for something undefined, a situationship; for dating one person regularly, “seeing someone.” Once it’s official, couples say they’re exclusive, often after a DTR, or define-the-relationship, conversation. Each word implies a different level of commitment, so it helps to check which one the other person means.

What does Gen Z call flirting?

The closest documented word is rizz, which Oxford defines as “style, charm, or attractiveness; the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner.” Someone who flirts well “has rizz,” and Oxford also records the verb “to rizz up,” meaning to attract, seduce or chat up a person. Oxford named rizz its Word of the Year in 2023.

What words can I use instead of dating?

Common alternatives are “seeing someone,” “talking,” “exclusive,” “together” and “partner.” They aren’t interchangeable: “talking” can mean a few weeks of texts, while “exclusive” means you’ve both agreed to stop seeing other people. If the difference matters to you, ask the other person which word they would use. That question is, more or less, the DTR conversation.

How we reported this

The Smart Dating Editorial Team wrote every definition in this glossary. Where a dictionary, a study or a public agency has documented a term, we link it in the sentence it supports; each source was opened and checked on September 27, 2026, including the hotline numbers. Terms without a documented origin - roster dating, nanoship, textationship, caspering, soft ghosting, roaching, monkey branching, slow burn, curving and dry texting - get a definition only, with no claims about who coined them or when. Search figures are Google Ads estimates retrieved via DataForSEO. We add terms when they show up in real use and in real searches; our editorial policy has the details.