Macskamami lettem, nem menő nagynéni

What does “menő” mean in Hungarian?

Menő is the Hungarian for “cool”, “trendy” or “a big shot” — Ez a kabát menő! (“This coat is cool!”). The lovely twist is its origin: it’s the present participle of megy, “to go”, so a menő thing or person is literally “going” — going places, on the up, in fashion. English does the same trick with “going places” or “happening”; Hungarian folded the whole idea into one breezy adjective.

As a noun, egy nagymenő is “a big shot”. The opposite is gáz (“uncool”, literally “gas”) or ciki (“embarrassing”). In the clip the speaker jokes that instead of becoming the menő nagynéni — the cool aunt — she’s turned into a full-blown cat-mum, playing the upbeat slang word off against her self-deprecating new identity.