The difference between style, coolness, awesomeness, and radicalness?

What is it? I've been browsing dictionaries, with no conclusive evidence either way. Obviously dictionaries are not "hip" enough to know, or something, so I'm asking you guys. And what's the difference between all those and "hipness"? What about poise, elegance, grace and sophistication?

It sounds like you're asking about the connotations (the feeling, the flavor, the emotional load) of those words, as opposed to their dictionary definitions. Is that it?

If so, in general,

• saying someone has "style" is generally positive, and is usually used to indicate that they have a recognizable pattern of presentation that is attractive and cohesive.
• "coolness" is always positive, and indicates that they have a quality or qualities that the person speaking wants to emulate. (You might want to check out the page The Utterly and Completely Definitive Guide to Cool). What constitutes "coolness" varies by culture and time.
• "awesomeness" and "radicalness" have become pretty much meaningless through overuse, beyond "there's something about this that I really like".

edited 25th Feb '12 9:18:17 AM by Madrugada

The joke was that they're all the same thing. And they are.

The decade?

If you have nothing to say in response to the OP, don't bother to post. If you think a thread should be closed, Holler. Clear?

Not sure — apparently, even native speakers find this confusing, so I don't have a hope in hell of getting this right myself...

But I wonder what neologisms the next generations will come up with in order to express the general concept of "something being very, very good".

I'm betting that they will all be totally gnarly

I'm betting it'll be schwarbage.

Oh, yeah, there's also "gnarly" and "righteous" and "epic".

Okay, so the words tend to be misused and watered down, kind of like trope names. But let's look back at the origins, let's revalue these smoothed-out coins, as Nieztsche might have put it.

• awesome: inspires awe. Awe: A mixed emotion of reverence, respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty, sublimity, or might. Even more originally: dread, pure and simple. Though for some reason it ended up being something completely different than dreadful or terrible... but very close to terrific... so we do have a dicothomy of sorts around the feeling of "paralyzing terror". There's a good and a bad side to this feeling, apparently.
• cool: not too cold, not too warm. In control. Calm. Indifferent, disdainful, unconcerned. This seems to relate to the "cold cool" properties indicated by Madrugada's link. So far it appears that cool and awesome are related to power: how powerful beings act, and the reaction they provoke.
• style: what Madrugada said: basically seems to work the same way as "taste". Originally it means "the way something is executed and presented", with an emphasis on appearance. "Stylish" would be the same as "tasteful": it is understood that they have good style/taste, style/taste the user approves of. From what I can gather, I understand that there's an emphasis on delicateness, sophistication and flourish, in the way of a signature or a blade swish, not in the meticulous, quiet way of, say, embroidery.
• radical: operating at the level of the root of things (like Gollum?), the fundaments, usually accompanied by "change", as in, a drastic, dramatic change. Revolutions are supposed to be radical. Also, refers to one who advocates such policies. This all leads to connotations of "daring", "bold", "audacious", "rash" and "foolhardy". Again, a demonstration of power (or at least of the belief in one's own power).

So, they are not the same thing. Though Rainbow Dash is all of them at once. So is the falcon. The turtle would fit none of them: his only virtues are dogged determination and extreme loyalty. Twilight's failure to see the difference between those strikes me as surprising, given her level of scholarship, but then again, I had to check dictionaries to make really sure.

Anyone care to try their hand with the remaining ones?

• gnarly
• righteous
• bad, badass
• hip
• poise
• elegance
• grace
• sophistication

Connotative definitions are going to vary wildly from person to person, and region to region. The "internet crowd" will hear "epic" as usually big or unprecedented, while some of the "outsiders" will think specifically of length/height/size.

There's not much to discuss here if you're looking for a very solid answer. Technically, they can all mean the same thing. It's just subjective on what each words specifically means to each person.

English being unregulated vernacular and all that?

@ Carc. Well, there's "butters" (???), and "dank" (Yes. I know the original definition), and "book" (???).

How about "sparkles"? Also, "peachy".