Connotation: That's Raw!

You are standing in the middle of a High School parking lot. There are a bunch of teenagers milling around their cars. A new car pulls into the lot. It is more than a car, though, it’s a red Toyota Tacoma that is lifted so high that a freshman can stand under it comfortably. As the driver jumps down from the passengers seat and makes his way over to where his friends stand by their cars one of his friends high-fives the Tacoma driver and says, “Nice truck man, its raw!”
According to dictionary.refrence.com “Raw” can mean one of five things.
1. uncooked, as articles of food: a raw carrot.
2. not having undergone processes of preparing, dressing, finishing, refining, or manufacture: raw cotton.
3. unnaturally or painfully exposed, as flesh, by removal of the skin or natural integument.
4. painfully open, as a sore or wound.
5. crude in quality or character; not tempered or refined by art or taste: raw humor.
One would not use any of these definitions to describe a car. Each of them seem something negative and the car is admired by the drivers friends so they wouldn’t call it by these descriptions. These definitions would be used more like this.
“The raw egg gave my sister salmonella.” or “The uncooked egg gave my sister salmonella.”
“The raw flesh oozed with a yellow puss.” or “The unnaturally exposed flesh oozed with a yellow puss.”
“His raw humor was not appreciated at the funeral.” or “His crude humor was not appreciated at the funeral.”
None of these definitions of the word “raw” even remotely mirror the effect the friend is going for when he says that the truck is raw. The answer to what the friend is really talking about lies in something called slang. Slang is something used all over the world and most people use it daily. If you are ignorant to a region or cultures slang, though, you may have yourself in a sticky situation while trying to interpret. Slang is unique everywhere you go and unless you grew up around it, it can be very confusing.
In California the word “raw” is used to describe something as good, cool, or that the speaker using the word is impressed by something. For example:
“That skateboard is raw!” translates to “That’s an impressive skateboard!”
“That concert last night was raw!“ translates to “That concert last night was cool!”
The denotation of “raw” is generally a bad thing. So when someone uses it as a compliment around someone from out of the area the meaning of the word in slang can sometimes be confused by the dictionary definition. In California, the use of “raw” is widespread and widely known and it has become such a part of the vocabulary that some don’t even think it slang. So, don’t always assume what you think a word means is correct because in different cultures the meaning may be astronomically different.