Still More Bad Girl Talk (UNCLASSIFIED)

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu Oct 21 02:09:28 UTC 2010


On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 10:03 AM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
<Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:

> Wilson -- did you really mean "skink" there? Â I would have expected
> "skank".

I'm just messing with y'all. Whether you use the spelling -ank or
-ink, the BE pronunciation is [-ANk]. I've wondered since the '40's
which spelling ought to be used. But, without a clue as to the origin
of the word... Back in Saint Louis, _skank_ and _skag_ were/are? used
interchangeably, with a meaning not quite the same as today's: a girl
from the projects or otherwise normally so poverty-ridden that she was
in no position to say no to a guy in a position to, ah, "help her
out," shall we say. At least, that was the theory. Nobody that I knew
ever tried to work that game. It was just talked about.

--
-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

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