For Better or for Worse

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 13:58:52 -0500, sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM> wrote:

> Jonathan Lighter writes:
>>"Grunge speak" was indeed a hoax, but several of Jasper's terms are still
>>occurring - in small numbers - on the Net.
>
>Dunno about FB or FW, but FWIW, "grunge"   & "grungy" were both alive &
>well and in constant use in the late 40s early 50s on the Reed College
>campus.  They were sort of all-purpose words: could mean "stuff," could
>mean "crud," could be an expletive ("grunge!").   It was thought to have
>been an import from the USNavy: there were a lot of GI Bill vets in school
>then.
>I rarely heard it after leaving Reed, except among old Reedies, though
>"grungy" would turn up sporadically in fiction (esp. Brit), meaning dirty
>or ratty.
>The reappearance in the Pac NW music scene (when? late 80s, early 90s)
>seemed like a spontaneous new birth.

Just to clarify... the "grunge speak" hoax to which Jonathan and I
referred had nothing to do with the term "grunge" itself.  The link that I
gave <http://www.factoftheday.com/grungespeak.html> provides the whole
story of how an overzealous New York Times reporter was bamboozled by
Megan Jasper, a sales representative for Sub Pop Records, into printing an
entirely spurious lexicon of "grunge" terminology (e.g., "swingin' on the
flippety-flop" for "hanging out").  After the hoax was revealed, some
ironic types started using Jasper's pseudo-slang with tongue in cheek.


--Ben Zimmer