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Janky, a Fifty-Year Slang Summary

Melanie from San Antonio, Texas, uses the term janky to mean “not good ” or “not working well,” and in her family, they’ll jokingly use the term dejankify and dejankification to refer to washing their dog. The slang term janky in one spelling or another has been around since the late 1960s (although we didn’t take it that far back during this segment). Also spelled jinky, jinkie, and jankey, it’s probably based on the word junky and influenced by skanky and stanky, a jocular way of saying stinky. This is part of a complete episode.

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