How Was “Gnarly” Coined?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Andrew. I’m from Imperial Beach, California.

Imperial Beach, just south of San Diego. Welcome.

Hi, Andrew. What can we do for you?

I grew up at the beach, and I grew up surfing.

And one of the terms that we would use for waves when it was like big and stormy is the word gnarly.

Now, I talked to a guy once, and he said that he invented the word because he was some old cat.

And he was like, yeah, my hands are all gnarled, and, you know, I invented the word gnarly, and that’s how it came to be.

So I was just wondering, and I called the show.

All right, so let’s break this down.

Gnarly, G-N-A-R-L-Y.

And what does it mean in surfing?

Surfing, it just kind of has this adjective for big, kind of like nasty, maybe like heavy.

You know, gnarly in general, it’s kind of hard to describe.

You know, like, oh, did you see that wave that was gnarly, or that wipeout was gnarly.

It’s just kind of a generally used term.

It sounds like a situation that really puts an individual to the test where it’s very complicated and possibly dangerous.

But because it’s a challenge, gnarly is good because you can meet that challenge head on and sometimes succeed.

Does that sound right?

Yeah, that’s pretty on the head there.

I like that.

Yeah, definitely.

And how old is your friend who said he invented the word?

Oh, man, it was just some old timer.

He was probably 40, 50 years old.

And I ran into him in Santa Barbara one time.

Wait, 40 to 50 is an old timer?

He showed his hands because they were all messed up and gnarly, and he was like, I invented the word.

First of all, 40 to 50 is not an old timer.

I’m sorry.

Thank you.

That was like 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

About 10 years ago, a guy who, let’s say that he was 50 on the high end, said that he was the coiner of the surfing term gnarly.

Because we know he didn’t coin the other meaning of gnarly because it’s much older than him.

The idea of knobbly or rough or somehow contorted.

It’s possible.

Did he do a lot of surfing?

I barely knew the guy.

It was kind of like one of those things that a beach bum would tell you a story about.

The first uses that I know of, of the surfing word gnarly, there’s one from 1977, which is a solid citation, which is in a South African context.

And there’s another from 1970, which I’m a little less sure of, that is also from South Africa.

However, this is a big however, American surfers were surfing some amazing breaks in South Africa in the early 1970s.

So it’s possible that even though that first use in 1970 that I can find is in South Africa, it could still be American.

So the question, that guy would have been old enough to have been a surfer in South Africa in 1970.

However, I doubt it because, you know, I hear you and I, we all hear these these guys taking these claims.

I coined this word and I don’t know what they think they’re going to get out of it.

And, you know, 99 times out of 100, you can prove them wrong with just dates.

You know, you weren’t born.

But in this case, it’s possible.

But I would doubt it.

Well, what I picture is the water itself looking gnarly, you know.

Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely used to like the water looks gnarly or like that wave looks gnarly or like did you see that?

It can be used to like, hey, did you see that accident on the freeway?

Man, that was gnarly.

You know, it’s one of those deals where it’s kind of interchangeable.

It’s not specific to the surfing world.

It’s just how I learned the words.

Yeah.

Well, outstanding.

I got to say, Andrew, this is great.

He probably didn’t coin it, but, you know, let’s just talk about surfing language anyway.

That’s fun.

It’s fun to do.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you again for letting me have the opportunity.

Thanks, Andrew.

Thank you, man.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

All right.

Bye.

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