Heard on The Judges: "gank" con; "blow" cell phone; "an habitual ..."

[Mark Mandel]

On many of my friends' blogs I see memes, quotations, links, &c.
credited as "ganked from so-and-so".
(Sent from my PDA)

On 11/21/08, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> A. Marlice, a thirty-ish, black female speaker from Saginaw, MI:
>
> "She the _gank_-master, your honor."
>
> Judge Karen:
>
> 'What's a 'gank'"
>
> A.
>
> "That's a con, your honor."
>
> B. Nicole, a thirty-ish, black female speaker from Saginaw, MI:
>
> "That's not true, your honor! She's _an habitual_ liar!"
>
> [ ... ]
>
> Judge Karen:
>
> "I think you trying to _gank_ me, Coco [= B]."
>
>
> "Gank" has many attestations - I stopped at the 21st - in the Urban
> Dictionary, primarily with the meanings, "kill; rob," with a claimed
> origin in "gang kill." But I may well have found the simple "con"
> meaning, had I kept looking.
>
> -Wilson
>
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
Mark Mandel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org