[Ads-l] Gnarly (surfer slang; slight antedating, 1968)

[Bonnie Taylor-Blake]

OED (and others) has a 1977 citation from South Africa as its earliest
example of "gnarly" in the surfer-slang sense of "[d]angerous,
challenging," with a note that its coinage was "[p]erhaps with reference to
the appearance of rough sea."

Here it is in Santa Barbara, California, in 1968.

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A small, rocky point marks the southern end of the best surfing area, a
point with the friendly name of Tarantula. The waves there are even less
friendly. On big south swells, Tarantula often shows a big, gnarly left
wall. Almost any hollow left tube nowadays is described as "just like the
Banzai Pipeline."

[Dewey Schurman, "Surfing: How to Avoid The Malibu Crush," Santa Barbara
(California) News-Press, 24 August 1968, p. C-3;
https://www.newspapers.com/article/santa-barbara-news-press-gnarly-81968/183073151/
.]

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But outside, Craig was dropping into the next wave, an unbelievable wall of
a gnarly 12 feet.

[Dewey Schurman, "U.S. Surfing Championships Recall Major Upset of 1963,"
Santa Barbara News-Press, 28 September 1968, p. C-4;
https://www.newspapers.com/article/santa-barbara-news-press-gnarly-92819/204162847/
.]

-------

By considerable, I mean waves double-overhead and over. Jim Head reports
seeing Sands break on a giant swell in [the] late 1950s when peaks near the
point were breaking a very gnarly 12 foot plus.

[Dewey Schurman, "Surfing: Sands Beach, Old Reliable," Santa Barbara
News-Press, 16 November 1968, p. C-15;
https://www.newspapers.com/article/santa-barbara-news-press-gnarly-11161/204162981/
.]

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Reporter Dewey "Scoop" Schurman, then a surfer himself, continued using
"gnarly" in his surfing column for the newspaper. Through an intermediary,
I've managed to contact Mr. Schurman, who later became City Editor of the
News-Press, with a view to ask about his earliest memories of how the word
was used and where it may have come from.

I should mention that I've also found references beginning in 1968 to the
Gnarly Beasts (sometimes Gnarley Beast[s] and Knarly Beast[s]), a rock band
-- perhaps a surf rock band? -- that played small gigs in and around
Southern California. I don't know how bandmates arrived at the name and
what "Gnarly" was supposed to have conveyed here, though.

-- Bonnie

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