Thief Finesse

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sarah from Indianapolis.

Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you?

What’s up?

So I work at a high school on the south side of Indianapolis, and there’s a word that my students use pretty regularly, a word that I’ve heard before, finesse, but the way that they use it is not a way that I was familiar with previously.

Finesse?

Finesse, which in my understanding is called F-I-N-E-S-S-E, although I’ve never seen it written down the way that they use it.

So they use the word finesse to mean to steal. Give me a sentence here, a conversation that would happen.

Yeah, so yesterday a student left his cell phone in my classroom, and in the next period another student found it and said, “Man, I was about to finesse that,” meaning I was about to take it.

Oh, finesse.

Well, that’s a really interesting word. If you look in the New Oxford American Dictionary, the main definition is something like to do something in a subtle or delicate manner, which I think is for most of us what we think of when we think of finesse.

But there is a second definition marked as chiefly North American that says slyly attempt to avoid blame or censure. And although that doesn’t apply exactly to what you’re talking about, there is a long history dating at least to the 1950s of finesse being related to being cunningly kind of sly, just doing things with an intent to deceive.

If you look at rapgenius.com, which is a great place to get a handle on a lot of slang, you look up finesse, you will find that it is all over the place. But almost always there’s three things happening.

One is it’s a slightly devious, sly, cunning thing. Two is it’s almost never about your personal style as much as about the style that you need in order to accomplish your goals. So, for example, if I needed to steal a cell phone, that would apply or take back a cell phone.

And the third thing that’s happening with finesse, that they definitely do not mean it like in the straight up main definition of finesse to do something in a subtle or delicate manner. They mean to do it in a sly or cunning manner.

So I think.

And so it’s often used as a verb then?

Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen it as a verb, definitely as a verb. And I don’t know that that’s exactly the situation that you’re talking about, but the way that you present it to me, he might have meant more to take his phone in a cunning manner more than he meant to steal his phone.

Okay, okay, very interesting. And that would kind of ease into it. Slang is a mess. Slang is all over the place, and it tends to really wobble back and forth between definitions.

So, Sarah, are you saying it’s pretty widespread among your students?

Yes. In fact, most of my students know the meaning of finesse as to steal. Like they will define it that way. But they don’t know the more common uses of the word.

Oh, that’s interesting, right? That is really one of the definitions of slang is that the standard meaning is kind of pushed aside for a more narrow meaning to be used among a close group of people.

Yeah. I mean, when I was growing up, I might have said cop or I know some people say kype.

Kype or cop, yeah. I kyped that.

But maybe that’s passe now. Maybe it’s all finesse.

Maybe it’s all finesse. Well, that’s cool. It sounds like a natural outgrowth from the cunning meanings of finesse. And I like that it becomes a verb.

Awesome. Well, they’ll be so excited to hear that.

Well, Sarah, we appreciate the field report. We always like to hear from teachers who are hearing slang from their students.

Yeah, if you get more from them, by all means, send us an email and tell us about it, all right?

Awesome.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Cheers. Take care.

Thanks, Sarah.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you work in a classroom, we’ve got kids in your house, we’d love to hear the slang that they’re using, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.