Etymology of “Janky”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, how you doing?

Hi, great. Who’s this?

This is Daniel from Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Daniel from Chattanooga.

Hello, Daniel. What’s going on in Chattanooga?

Oh, it’s kind of the devil beating his wife.

Oh, it is?

Yeah.

It’s raining and sunshine at the same time?

Absolutely, and I happen to be standing in a good spot.

Huh. The devil’s beating his wife, a monkey’s wedding, the jackals are getting married.

There are a lot of terms for when the sun is shining and it’s raining at the same time.

Interesting.

Is that what you called about?

No, actually.

I was calling in reference to the word janky, and if you’ve maybe ever heard that word before.

Janky.

Spell it?

J-A-N-K-Y, right?

J-A-N-K-Y.

And how would you use it, Daniel?

Well, normally, you know, I’d use it to signify, like, you know, low-quality workmanship or some sort of thing that was slipshod or barely usable.

But recently I asked someone else about it, and they seem to consider it a trait of a person, like a state of being.

Like, that’s a janky person. I wouldn’t hang out with them.

So, Daniel, how would you use janky to describe an object?

Say, for example, in the sentence, like, let’s all go for a group bike ride.

I don’t want to go. I’ve got this janky bicycle.

One clatters down the road, you know.

Yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly how I would use it.

I would say, you know, I don’t want to use that hard drive to archive our data because it’s kind of janky and it might die at any moment.

Right.

Which means it’s kind of suspect and a little we’re not quite sure about how it’s going to perform and how it’s going to turn out.

Sure, sure.

I’ve done some digging on this term.

Well, bring it on.

Well, I don’t have much.

I can tell you that it goes back to the early 1990s.

It’s probably older than that, but that’s the first time that I could find it in print.

It’s actually on the Internet.

And the only theory that I’ve seen that makes a little bit of sense or been able to put together that might be related to a dialect use of jinky that means having been jinxed or making people feel like they’ve been jinxed.

Somebody who acts as if they’re a little weird.

Oh, interesting.

Well, that kind of molds it away from what I would ever use it for, but now I can probably use it more effectively.

Well, what you might be finding here is that the word has two different uses, which English abounds with words that are polysamous, as they say, which is more than one meaning.

They have more than one meaning.

Yeah, that word just sounds like what it is, janky.

It sounds like junky and skanky all mixed together.

It’s just really negative.

Well, I think you’ve helped me clarify what I want to do with it.

All right.

What are you going to do with it?

Just use it.

All right.

Oh, okay.

You know, I just want to make sure that I’m using my slang correctly.

Is that okay?

Sure, sure.

At some point, you’re going to get too old for that, though, so just keep that in mind.

Yeah, I guess so.

Old people who use young slang are just no good.

They’re kind of janky.

Yeah, kind of creepy or maybe janky.

Yeah.

It’s like being bald with a ponytail.

Well, thanks, guys.

All right, thank you, Daniel.

Thanks for giving us a ring.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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