Автор: luxor
Дата: 12-09-07 11:17
unlike the innovative adjective "fun" ("We had a very fun time"), which
>>derives historically from a noun, the innovative adjective "whack" is
>>almost surely derived historically from the verb form "whacked", in its
>>slang sense 'messed up, fucked (up), screwed (up), twisted', eventually
>>with a range of meanings going from the mild 'awry, out of the
>>ordinary' to the stronger 'wrong, bad'. (i was at least familiar with
>>this lexical item "whacked".)
>
>I haven't looked into it very carefully, but my casual notion would be that
>this "wack" = "whack" is from "whack[off]" = "masturbate". Pretty much
>analogous development is seen in "jagoff" which is used like
>"stupid/contemptible [person]", often without perception of the underlying
>"jackoff" = "masturbate[r]". And the English presumed cognate "wank[er]"
>(originally "whank[er]", I think) has similar development. [The ultimate
>etymology of these is probably onanatopoeic, right?]
>
>The novelty might be the predicative use (as well as the loss of "off" ...
>or is/was "whack" commonly used alone in some regions or milieux [like
>"wank" apparently is in England])?
>
>>1. if adjective "whack" is directly related to "whacked", then we have
>>an unusual loss of final /t/.
>
>I would speculate that this /t/-loss did not occur, and that the earlier
>version was "whack[off]" [adj.] = "jack-off" meaning roughly
>"stupid"/"contemptible".
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