How do you communicate cool?

Finding the right words to communicate cool is more important than you think

Words and phrases synonymous with the word cool are constantly evolving. One day the kids think those pants are groovy and decades later the sneakers are bananas.

The word cool has more synonyms that almost any other word. Then again, not every word represents a cultural phenomenon, a kind of modern religious movement. (And so it will remain italicized because without emphasis the word is too ethereal, yet wrapped in quotation marks its definition is too limited.)

“This attitude [cool] is in the process of becoming the dominant type of relation between people in Western societies, a new secular virtue,” wrote Dick Pountain and David Robins in their 2000 book, Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude. This intelligent and totally uncool book is in step with the late 1990s habit of British journalists to examine cool.