I don’t suppose that there are many things you can attribute to the 1980s cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The show wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, controversial, or thoughtful television. Yet I am inclinced to think that the ubiquity of the term “cool” as an adjective is owing in part to the popularity of a show where terms like “awesome,” “tubular,” and “cool” were thrown about with consistency. I, of course, have zero research to support such a claim…so take it with a grain of salt. Nonetheless “cool” as a term is incredibly popular, even still today. Yet to attempt to define the term with an concreteness posses some problems. What does cool mean?
Try and define “cool,” go ahead. It’s not so easy. We like to use it as a term meaning that something is generally liked (i.e. “that new band is cool”). But the term has a much bigger meaning and it’s application is often to things that are not generally liked (think the Beatnik lifestyle of the 50s). But this still doesn’t help us define the term. Cool, as a word, is actually nigh to impossible to define, and that’s as it should be. After all if you could define cool, set it within parameters and guard it with rules, then it would automatically cease to be cool. That’s not to say that “cool” is simply anarchy or the absence of rules, it’s not. Cool, as a concept, has many different meanings and understandings and that is because the concept has been applied across the board and across times and cultures.
Cool, as a concept, has been found among people from different times and points in history. Some date it back to the time of the Enlightenment. Others, like one particular art historian, dates it as far back as the 15th century among African civilizations. Still others, like Nick Southgate, determined that cool is an Aristotelian concept, particularly found in his Nicomachean Ethics. It seems, at best, that cool has existed for centuries following the founding of civilization. We can understand, then, why it would be so hard to define.
While it may be impossible to ultimately and perfectly define “cool” there are some concepts associated with the term. Themes like rebellion, individuality, and calmness or self-control are all associated with the concept (and that’s just a few Western particulars). The history of cool is particularly fascinating and equally as difficult to trace. It involves various theories, evolutions, and dovetailing. It takes a different course in the West, with individualism heightened, than it does in the East. All of these factors add up to make a particularly important point: cool is a rather ambiguous term.
If “cool” can have so many various concepts behind it, it can be associated with so many different things, and it can be specifically hard to define then it becomes an almost useless term. Even a word like “hip,” which though it is outdated, has more meaning (to be “in the know,” aware of , trendy). “Cool,” on the other hand can mean everything and nothing all at once. In terms of semantics its a frustrating word…I suppose, however, that’s sort of what makes the term so “cool” to begin with.
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