In an earlier episode, we discussed the slang term sketchy, meaning “creepy” or “alarming” or “suspicious.” Grant shares an email from a listener suggesting a link to the world of amphetamine users. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Possible Origins of Sketchy”
Earlier this year we tackled the slang term sketchy, which means creepy or alarming or suspicious.
Do you remember that, Martha?
I sure do. And sketchy McSketcherson. I can’t even say it. Okay.
And sketchy McSketcherson, right?
Thank you. Yes. And sketchy. Right.
Well, we traced the word back to sketchy as in sketchy details, meaning that the subject was unclear or poorly explained.
And we also talked, I think, about the colloquial use of sketchy to mean insubstantial or imperfect.
And we suggested that was the origin of the modern slang version of sketchy, meaning suspicious or creepy, right?
But a listener named Gwen wrote us to point out that there are a variety of similar terms that are used by people who are involved with other people who do the drug methamphetamine.
So a sketcher, for example, is someone who uses meth.
Or if you are sketching, then you are high on meth.
And sketchy is used to describe someone who appears to be high on meth, though you don’t know for sure, right?
And so I didn’t know these terms, so I looked them up, and sure enough, I found a bunch more examples of most of them that back went up.
But the difficulty here is I think that those are so new, and the sketch explosion in the United States, just the rapid use of it, is relatively new compared to the longer history of the older meaning of sketch or sketchy.
I just don’t think that we can say that the slang meaning came directly out of the meth user’s world.
I suspect that the meth using kind of sketches the sketcher.
Yeah.
They came – they forked.
They all came from the same path, but it’s not the source of it.
It’s simply a brother to the other more general use of sketchy as a slang term.
