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I saw this sentence "Today is so yesterday" on a T-shirt one of my American friends wore.

My first impression is that the sentence means what's happening today is just repeating what's happening in the past. But I feel there might be some other interpretations too.

What will be English natives' take for the sentence?

dan
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1 Answers1

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"xxx is so yesterday" doesn't mean that xxx is the same as yesterday-in fact, the phrase isn't usually applied to dates at all. What it typically means is that xxx, whatever that may be, is out of fashion. It is a thing of yesterday, not a thing of today. There are several variants of this phrase in English, substituting in various past times, such as "xxx is so last year".

The t-shirt in question is (probably) a joke on the pace of changing fashions.

tmt
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    Are they joking that the pace of changing fashions is too slow? – dan Nov 20 '17 at 07:38
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    @dan No too fast. I think the thought behind it is that you can barelly start adopting the fashion before it is already old. The pace is too fast to keep up. – Mixxiphoid Nov 20 '17 at 07:46
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    @Mixxiphoid - Yeah, it reminds me of an old TV ad: someone is driving home with a brand-new phone when he sees a new billboard announcing the arrival of the next version or generation of the phone. – J.R. Nov 20 '17 at 08:51
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    To add to this good answer: Usually, you use this construction with things that have been gone for long. Dude, listening to the disco music is so 70s. / Using dumbphones is so 2005!. Naturally, the notion gets more ridiculous the shorter the distance between the date and now is. – Ian Nov 20 '17 at 10:11
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    By the same interpretation, it could also be taken to mean that today itself is out of fashion, i.e. life, in its current state, sucks. – NotThatGuy Nov 20 '17 at 13:56
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    I think its entirely plausible that the T-shirt is simply a joke about the phrase "(blank) is so yesterday", or perhaps a joke about how often people use this phrase to declare things out of date, by inserting something absurd. Plenty of ways to interpret it, I don't think there is any one right answer. – BradC Nov 20 '17 at 14:49
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    Or it may simply mean "I'm bored with today already." – Robert Harvey Nov 20 '17 at 23:51
  • Or "today was just like yesterday, even with all the changes made." – CPHPython Jun 29 '18 at 14:09
  • I think @dan's interpretation is far more likely than Mixxiphoid's. Most important though is that it is a joke and not to be taken literally or seriously ... so BradC's take is spot on. – Jim Balter Nov 14 '18 at 21:28