whack: a cool rule?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Mar 19, 2004, at 2:26 PM, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

> In a message dated 3/19/04 3:03:57 PM, zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU writes:
>
>
>> ron butters has noted
>> adjective "dick" (as in "so dick") and adjective "suck" (as in "how
>> suck"), and larry horn has chimed in with [british] adjective "wank"
>> (as in "really wank"), and it seems extremely unlikely that these
>> three
>> innovative adjectives and adjective "w(h)ack" have a common source.
>> it
>> is not, in fact, at all clear that they have similar semantics (beyond
>> their all involving negative judgments) or similar syntax.
>>
>
> What I was implying (not very clearly, because still somewhat inchoate
> in my
> own mind) was that there could be an interactive process here, based
> partly on
> phonology. That is to say, suppose that speakers associate "That is so
> wack"
> (or "whack"--how many people actually aspirate /w/ these days?) with
> "wacked"
> and/or "wacky" and think of deletion of the grammatical/derivational
> suffix as
> a rule for the cool (hearing it first in counterculture contexts,
> where it
> apparently first arose). These would-be cool people would then
> generalize the
> cool rule to other /k/-final pejorative stems, i.e., "dick," "suck,"
> "fuck," and
> even "wank." (Of course, this use of "so" is in itself a cool rule or
> set of
> rules.)
>
> One would predict that we would begin to get constructions such as
> "That is
> so jerk" (especially since appositive "jerk" is already possible, as
> in "As it
> turns out, marrying a millionaire was a jerk idea."...

cool.  there's also adjective "prick":
   "LA is so prick," the musician chortles.
   Hey! You don't have to be so prick.
   When I find out what being 'so prick' is, i'll stop being it...

i've had no success finding clear adjectival uses of "cock", "jack", or
"whoop", however.  but there's a lot of noise in the searches.

the closest i got for "jack" was the following:
   It causes the really talented bands to "sell out" or cop a really
"jack" attitude.
which i read as involving the noun "jack" 'money' (though goodness
knows i could be wrong).

the scorecard so far: YES on adjective
   w(h)ack, dick, suck, fuck, wank, jerk, stink, prick
but NO (so far) on adjective
   cock, jack, whoop.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)