Etymology of "wacko"

Mon Jan 30 14:28:00 UTC 2006

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In a message dated 1/14/06 11:21:46 PM, laurence.horn at yale.edu writes:<BR>
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<BLOCKQUOTE CITE STYLE="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px" TYPE="CITE"></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2">At 10:30 PM -0500 1/14/06, RonButters at aol.com wrote:<BR>
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</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"> In a message dated 1/13/06 10:15:57 PM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:<BR>
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>WACKO doesn't seem to fit in with the others, since the connection with WACK<BR>
>is at best opaque.<BR>
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< "wacky" + readjustment rule.  Nothing to it.</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"><BR>
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I don't understand this at all. Please explain.</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"><BR>
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The idea is that -o turns evaluatively negative adjectives ("pink", "weird", "schizophrenic", "homosexual", "stupid")  or nouns ("wine") into person-denoting nouns, with the semantic change formerly noted (categorization, pigeonholing, increased pejoration, etc. etc.).  If the adjective ends in -y ("sleazy", "wacky"), delete the -y before adding the -o (this is the readjustment rule I mentioned, a common sort of move in word-formation rules, not particularly ad hoc), whence "sleazo", "wacko", and I'd guess "stinko" (< "stinky").  If the source is polysyllabic and contains a connective -o-, drop the material after the -o-, whence "nympho", "schizo", "homo", "klepto".  "fatso" < "fat" involves a different readjustment (OK, a bit ad hoc), "lezbo" involves dropping the post-tonic syllables, also not unheard-of elsewhere.   And so on.   OK, I admit the "nothing to it" was a bit cavalier, but derivational morphology marches on.<BR>
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Thanks for the explanation. I somehow missed the step that e.g. STINKO is immediately derived from STINKY, not STINK. Still, in that case, how is WACKY derived from WACK? What is a "wack"? Didn't that have something to do with women in the army during WWII?<BR>
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