![]() So I'd guess that it originated somewhat earlier, perhaps in late 1980s, and then spread through the usual youth-culture channels. The main drawback is the sketchy neighborhood women might not want to wander around alone at night.įWIW, my own memory is that I first heard this usage among students in the early 1990s. Turning to "sketchy street", we find Amanda Anderson, Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture (1993):ĭickens's depictions of Alice Marwood, the sketchy street woman, and Edith Dombey, the commodified wife, reveal how his emergent preoccupations with …Ĭhecking out "sketchy neighborhood", the earliest clear example is in Fodor's Italy '96: On the Loose (published in 1995): Because it is one of the only bars open in the neighborhood at 8 am, warm, and other sketchy guys are there.īut before 1994, the Google Books trail goes cold for "sketchy guy(s)". ![]() This is where everyone goes when J's (see Cruising, Sex Clubs) kicks you out at 8 a.m. Here's from Betty & Pansy's Severe Queer Review of New York City (1994): He learned a year later that she'd been mostly unsafe with her previous partner, who was a fly-by-night, a sketchy guy, a businessman, … Actually, more like some stupid actor playing some sketchy guy - too good-looking to actually be sketchy.Īnd this from Dana Lear, Sex and sexuality: risk and relationships in the age of AIDS (1997): He looks like a crazy person, like some sketchy guy you'd see on TV. Tracking this phrase in Google books, we find this from the teen novel Brave New Girl (2001): One way past this problem is to look for particular collocations (like "sketchy guy(s)") that are highly likely to involve the new sense. It's not easy to do this, because even today, the great majority of uses of sketchy are the more traditional senses. " Sketchballs", " Skeevy", ), but we've never tried to track its origin and progress in time and space. ![]() This usage has come up in a few LL posts over the years (e.g. My assumption (without real evidence) is that that this usage started with the sense "composed of an outline without much detail" (OED sense 2), and the figurative extension "Of a light, flimsy, unsubstantial or imperfect nature" (OED sense 3), further extended via the phonetic associations of neighbor-words like scummy, scurvy, scruffy, scuzzy, skeevy. That was in the early '90s in a sketchy building on the Lower East Side (which was still very sketchy back then and had no boutique hotels or non-dive trendy bars). If any of you ever see me at a show or an event, and I hand you a baked good, it’s really not sketchy. The word "rise" seems to be attached to really crappy sequels and prequels: Rise of the machines, rise of the lycans, rise of the Cobra, Rise of the silver surfer, Carlito's Way: rise to power. Hair is spilitting at the ends and bangs need a trim but dont know where to get a cheap but not sketchy haircut I don't think its laced with cocaine since the guy dealing to us isn't a sketchy guy lol.Īnyways, I wasn't trying to compare the morals of salesmen with sketchy bankers. When you have a sketchy driving record like me, and you, just shop around, you have to go with the large outfits as they can absorb higher risk folks. They don't recommend he take the job and worry how it would affect his reputation. The Husband has since talked to some of the doctors who work with him now and they say this doctor and practice is really sketchy. ![]() There's an area near the river in town that is really sketchy: a lot of muggings and violence, and naturally lots of graffiti. He's talking about sketchy in a sense something like "questionable, iffy, untrustworthy, unsafe, poor quality, creepy, deprecated". Is there a way to track the evolution of the word? How recent is it, and what its geographical distribution? I don't think I used the word "sketchy" till I came to college in Virginia, but now I use it with such frequency (especially whenever a party, a city or nightlife is involved) that I am surprised that the meaning I use most for it is not included in most dictionaries. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |