IIT Madras has a colourful slang, interesting enough to have resulted in a published Master's thesis at a German University. An eclectic mix of English, Hindi, Telugu and Tamil, it's been adopted within some other Chennai colleges too! Leading newspapers have often been quoted while saying that IIT-M lingo might very well qualify to be a separate language in itself!!

IIT Madras is different from its northern counterparts in the sense that it lacks a single uniting Indian language among its students, with major languages being Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi. The IIT Madras lingo uses English words like 'put', 'crash', 'app', 'fart', 'peacemax', 'painmax' etc and Hindi words like 'hazaar', 'junta' etc. It also borrows words from Telugu, Tamil, and Kannada making it more comprehensive and richer in feel as compared to its other IIT counterparts!!