whack 'whacked'

[Laurence Horn]

>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

--given that "w(h)ack" would essentially equate to "out of whack".
Seems unlikely, although not impossible.  The OED sees "out of whack"
as being related to "wacky", so all semantic bets appear to be off,
if not out of whack.

Larry

>, 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