Totes is what happens when "totally" gets a nickname.

The word is built in two steps. First "totally" is clipped down to tot-. Then an -s is added, the same affectionate, pet-name ending that turns words cute. Wiktionary analyses it exactly this way, and Cambridge and Oxford Learner's dictionaries both list it as informal English for "totally".

It does two jobs. As an intensifier it adds enthusiasm: "totes amazing", "totes adorable". As a one-word reply it means yes, definitely: "Coming tonight?" "Totes!" Either way, the tone is bright, breezy and a little sugary.

That tone is part of why it peaked and faded. Totes belonged to the cheerful, clipped style of early-2010s texting and social posts, the same moment that gave us bae and cray. Wiktionary's earliest quotation comes from a 2010 episode of the cartoon Adventure Time, and the word was everywhere in the years that followed.

As it spread, it became easy to parody. Said with a flat voice, "I am totes fine with it" now means the opposite. Used sincerely, it can sound deliberately twee or like a quotation from another decade.

Dictionaries haven't retired it, and some people still use it with affection. But as slang, totes has moved from the front of the vocabulary to the back: a word that tells you roughly when its speaker first learned to text.