"sketchy"

[Jonathan Lighter]

My students were using "sketchy" it to mean "suspicious; shady; fishy" back
in 1996-97.

JL

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 7:19 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "sketchy"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> makes main stream?
>
> Maureen Dowd in the NYTimes, today (Nov 14):
>
> "It is disturbing that an ethically sketchy, politically motivated
> F.B.I. agent could spark an incendiary federal investigation
> tunneling into private lives to help a woman he liked and later blow
> it up to hurt a president he didn't like."
>
> While "sketchy" here might mean simply "flimsy, unsubstantial" --
> that is, "ethically-challenged", it could perhaps just as easily mean
> "creepy" -- as in an F.B.I. agent who sends a woman he is not married
> to a shirtless photograph of himself.
>
> Joel
>
> At 11/14/2012 11:23 AM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
> >On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 11:16 AM, Amy West wrote:
> > >
> > > Heard in the wild last night on the Marketplace story about John McAfee
> > > (of antivirus fame):
> > >
> > > He started carrying around a gun and this "really sketched people out."
> > >
> > >
> >
> http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/web-pioneer-john-mcafee-caught-murder-mystery
> > >
> > > I've become familiar with the "creepy" sense of "sketchy" because that
> > > seems to be the first sense that comes to my students' mind when I use
> > > it (while the "vague" sense is what I intend), but now here's a
> > > corresponding verb with particle, where "sketch" seems to have replaced
> > > "freaked."
> >
> >See my 2010 On Language column, "Creeper! Rando! Sketchball!":
> >
> >http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/magazine/31FOB-onlanguage-t.html
> >"And just as you can be creeped out by a creepy person, you can be
> >sketched out by a sketchy person."
> >
> >--bgz
> >
> >--
> >Ben Zimmer
> >http://benzimmer.com/
> >
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> >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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