whack 'whacked'

[Geoff Nathan]

At 11:48 AM 3/17/2004, you wrote:
>On Mar 16, 2004, at 5:35 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>
> >> unlike the innovative adjective "fun" ("We had a very fun time"),
> >> which
> >> derives historically from a noun, the innovative adjective "whack" is
> >> almost surely derived historically from the verb form "whacked", in
> >> its
> >> slang sense 'messed up, fucked (up), screwed (up), twisted',
> >> eventually
> >> with a range of meanings going from the mild 'awry, out of the
> >> ordinary' to the stronger 'wrong, bad'.  (i was at least familiar with
> >> this lexical item "whacked".)

The semantics doesn't work quite right, but the expression 'out of whack'
(off-kilter, not working right etc.) seems related here.  I don't think
anyone's suggested this connection yet.

Geoff