whack 'whacked'

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>NSOED2 thinks "jack (off)" 'masturbate' is a development from the noun
>"jack" 'man', itself from the proper name.  it thinks "wank (off)" is
>of unknown origin.

Of course you're never provably wrong in choosing "unknown origin". I doubt
"jack off" from "jack" = "man" (where are "man off", "bloke off", "guy
off", "tom off", "joe off"?); I suspect "jack" is basically like "jack up
the car to change the tire" (if there's any documentary evidence, of
course, that trumps my idle notions).

>in any case, it *is* true that references to masturbation tend to
>extend their meanings to cover 'inconsequential', 'worthless',
>'contemptible'.  but the meanings of adjective "w(h)ack" that i'm
>seeing extend out from 'out of kilter, messed up' -- cf. "w(h)acko" --
>to 'wrong, bad', and so just barely overlap with the semantics of the
>masturbatory expressions.  on semantic grounds, "w(h)ack (off)" is not
>a very likely source for adjective "w(h)ack".

I would speculate that "wack"/"whack" went its own way and the earlier form
was forgotten ... whether it was "whack-off", "wacky", or "whacked", or
even "out of whack". One would want to examine the earliest uses (I don't
have them handy).

>on syntactic grounds, it looks hopeless.  first, there's the fact that
>the early uses of the adjective are predicative, and it's hard to see
>how verbs could end up in this function.

Is it really certain that the early use was predicative? Searching Google
groups, I find "wack ideas" earlier than "that's wack" (1992 vs. 1994) ...
of course the material is sparse in the early days and I'm sure this was
around in the 1980's.

Again I would suppose that the predicative use arose after "wack" began its
independent adnominal career.

>   but let's look at adnominal
>uses, assuming that somehow they're the earlier ones.  these sound
>fishy to me if the "off" is preserved:
>   ??This is a really whack-off party.  [*not* describing a masturbatory
>gathering]
>and there are no parallels, so far as i know, for other masturbatory
>verbs, with or without the "off":
>   ??This is a really beat(-off)/wank(-off)/jack(-off) party.

The earliest application might have been "whackoff friends/ideas" (I've
surely heard the equivalents with "jackoff") > "wack friends/ideas", and
after this "wack" would go its own way, interpreted (by anybody who
happened to think about the matter) as presumably a derivative of "wacky"
or something else.

This is only a plausibility argument: I am not religiously attached to this
notion; I present it as one of several possibilities.

-- Doug Wilson