June 20, 2000

skanky

I've come across skanky several times recently, usually in jokes told by or about rednecks. I checked my Random House Electronic Dictionary (sorry, I don't have the dead-tree version), and all it lists is skank, referring to a way of dancing. What does the adjectival form mean? I infer it is somewhat the opposite of swanky.

Maybe I'll put skanky in the Random House dictionaries, thanks to your Word of the Day submission. Come to think of it, skanky is somewhat the opposite of swanky, though its origin is not in any way connected with that word. The adjective skanky probably originated in Black English in the senses 'nasty, repellent, ugly, malodorous', and it also meant 'sluttish, disreputable, immoral', almost always referring to a woman. The corresponding noun skank referred to 'a female prostitute or low-life'. Those senses of the adjective and noun have been in use from the early 1970s. One source derives skank from the words 'skunk' or 'stank', but other sources say it is of unknown derivation.

In the 1980s, skanky was associated with Valley Girl slang, especially in the sense 'dirty, repulsive, disgusting', and it is still used in this way. There are many equivalent terms-gross, scuzzy, groady come to mind. Skanky can describe stringy hair, sleazy clothing, or even immoral acts: "...saying yes to Clinton also appears to be their way of just saying no to Monicagate, meaning no to the very idea of making intimate personal behavior, even skanky behavior, the subject of a criminal inquiry" (Time, 1998).

The noun skank, originally referring to a female prostitute, now refers to a male prostitute or pimp, or anyone connected with that industry. By extension, it refers to any immoral or sleazy person.

It seems that both skank and skanky have evolved from a specific reference to an ugly or malodorous woman, especially a female prostitute, to their current use as general-purpose insults to males as well as females. I have seen references to "skanky Calvin Klein models" and "skanky lawyers."

The related verb skank has been used since the 1970s in the sense 'to dance with violent, jerky movements, usually to reggae music'. The OED describes the movements in more detail: rhythmically bending forward, raising the knees, and clawing the air with the hands in time to the music. The verbal noun skanking refers to this style of dancing, which probably originated in Jamaica.

Carol