“Pank Down” Means Pat or Tamp Down Something, Like Snow

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Marlene. I live in Indianapolis, Indiana.

What can we do for you?

I have a question about the word pink. It’s spelled P-A-N-K.

I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and the word was used mainly in the content of patting something down.

For example, tanking down snow to get the hill ready for skiing was the way it was mainly used.

And I always thought it was a word until I left the Upper Peninsula and I would talk about tanking something.

And nobody knew what I was talking about.

So I just wondered about the word and its origins.

And if you’ve ever heard it used anywhere else.

Yeah, how interesting.

I grew up in Kentucky, and when we talked about pink, we were talking about a very light reddish color.

That’s a pink shirt.

Really?

You have a pink shirt?

Yeah, exactly.

No, I never heard pink until I was talking with a youper like you, somebody from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

A youper?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

It’s very common in that area, also in Pennsylvania, upstate New York, but it’s pretty particular to that area, and it means exactly what you said.

It may be a combination of spank and pack, although it also may be related to a word from Scandinavian languages.

I know you have a lot of Swedish influence there and a lot of Finnish influence.

We do.

Yes.

Yes.

But it’s used in exactly the way that you describe it.

And honestly, I think if anybody from any part of the country heard somebody talking about panking down snow, I mean, it makes sense to me.

Does it make sense to you?

Yeah, you’d get it.

You know that it meant to tamp down and to firm up the snow.

It sounds like what it is, but it’s pretty particular to your part of the country.

We used it in other ways, too, though, which to mean patting something down.

Like in the 60s, you know how you’d tease your hair up?

And you would tank it down before you would spray it with Aquanet.

It was used to pat down everything.

Is that right?

So you did that, Marlene.

You put the Aquanet on your hair and panked it down?

Oh, yes.

Definitely.

Did you use Dippity-Doo?

I also used Dippity-Doo.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You’re bringing back memories.

For sure.

Yeah, my mom did that.

It was crazy how big she could make her hair in that particular kind of motion with the comb to get it higher than the…

In fact, it reached the ceiling.

But did she pank it down?

Well, she didn’t use that word.

She’s from St. Louis, so no doubt.

So what did she use?

I don’t know.

Mesh?

We would have mashed it down.

No, St. Louis isn’t very southern, nor is it anything like, you know, Youperville.

We would tamp it, pat, firm it up.

Tamp, probably.

Mush it down.

Yeah.

Pat.

So there you go.

Well, thank you.

I was just wondering, you know, if it was used elsewhere, so you’ve answered my question.

Thanks, Marlene.

Take care now.

You too.

Thanks a lot.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

I guess she was saying that she doesn’t do that to her hair anymore.

She doesn’t.

But, you know, it might come back in style.

You do that.

Let’s see it.

The headphones do that for me.

I want to see that for you.

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