A: I won a grand on a lottery ticket! B: Cool beans, man! Note: “Cool beans,” slang for “wonderful,” expresses excitement or approval, often with a deliberately folksy tone. First recorded among college students sometime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the phrase was popularized by the 1980-90s sitcom “Full House,” where it was used as a catchphrase by the character DJ Tanner (Candace Cameron). Slang lexicographer Jonathon Green has pointed to other legume slang phrases such as “some beans” (meaning “impressive”) and “full of beans” (meaning “excited”). Another theory links “cool beans” to drug culture, with drugs such as acid likened to beans. |