Basic question: did Sylvia Plath write like a 21st-century teenager?

Suggestions that the poet was 60 years ahead of the curve in using basic as a pejorative term remind me of how much ‘modern’ slang is actually pretty venerable

Was Sylvia Plath an early adopter of the adjective “basic” as an insult? It’s a theory which is put to us by the Telegraph, courtesy of the writer Alana Massey’s discovery earlier this month that “holy shit you guys, Sylvia Plath has been calling people basic since 1950. Pioneer bitch!”

Massey had been reading Plath’s unabridged journals when she came across the phrase. Recounting the details of a blind date in the second person – “you meet Bill in the car. It’s his convertible. You get a side glance as he drives: not bad – hair receding on temples, but manly” – the section sees Plath at a fraternity house, where “a fire is going, and the rugs and pine-panels are cosily collegiate … [but] you’ve had all you can take of good-looking vacuums and shallow socialites. So you try to be basic. You are such a basic character yourself, anyway.”

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