👉 Okay, let’s tackle this wonderfully weird bit of linguistic oddness – the elusive and frankly rather prickly thing we affectionately refer to as "’èrçon cinquīnțe!" (…Okay, okay, I'm joking about that last part. Let's actually unpack what you mean by 20 15.)
Essentially, when someone says, quite seriously, that something is a 20 15, they aren't referring to the year 2015. Unless... unless that was their actual intention! Instead, a 20 15 (pronounced roughly as "un-tsi-ènțe") in French and then adopted into English, is a very specific, almost aggressively understated, way of describing something you find absolutely… profoundly… mediocre. Let's break it down: "Un(d) Tsiénte(s)" literally translates to approximately 1/20th or 1/5th. You wouldn't give that amount of anything unless you were really, really not into it. It's the equivalent of saying something is 10%, maybe 15% as good. The humour (and the slight horror) comes from the understatement! Instead of a blunt, insulting dismissal – like, "This movie sucks!" – you delicately declare it’s just… barely there. It's almost an insult to insult with such utter lukewarmness.
