Keeping someone on the bench — interested but not played — while you see who else is available. A 2016 dating term from sport, and one of the earliest of the behaviour-naming wave that has not stopped since. The record's entry for the substitute.
'I'm benched' said by a man about a woman who replies every third day, in 2024. The record notes he said it with the acceptance of a reserve goalkeeper.
I remember when Benching was still a niche thing — 2016 — and you could use it without a footnote. The footnote arrived about six weeks later and never left.
The headnote reads like an autopsy. Adding, for balance: at its peak in 2017, Benching was genuinely useful — it did a job no existing word did, and it did it in under a second.
What does it mean? Write it the way you would say it out loud.
