by Kevin Burton
If the 60s were groovy, the 70s were nothing if not funky.
The funk was everywhere then, beginning with music, first seeping then flowing into just about everything else. The funk was the soup we swam in.
But I was a little surprised to see funky show up on a Merriam-Webster list of words about style. Was I wrong?
Without realizing it, I may have separated funky and stylish into two unmergeable camps, funky being for regular people, stylish being for snobs.
This could also be seen as a dividing line between black culture and white culture. But I have tried to erase such walls where they exist, not erect new ones.
Question: Have you ever heard Elton John described as funky? In his earlier concerts, were his costumes any less funky than those of Parliament Funkadelic?
Who wrote the book of funk?
Trick question! If I understand this properly, there can’t be a book of funk. You with me?
So glad to have Merriam-Webster and its list to rescue us from my current train of thought. Read on to learn that funky comes from the French:
Funky
“A foul smell” is the original meaning of the noun funk, which has lingered in English since the 17th century. This noun and the verb funk, meaning “to subject to an offensive smell or smoke,” probably derive from funquer, a French dialect verb meaning “to give off smoke.”
By the end of the 17th century, the adjective funky had been formed from the noun to describe something or someone having an offensive odor, such as “a funky bar” or “a funky armpit.” In the early 20th century, the adjective was picked up by jazz musicians who applied it to low-down, earthy, bluesy music. The Godfather of Soul James Brown plays on the term’s etymological roots in his tongue-in-cheek 1979 single “It’s too funky in here”: “Too funky in he’e / Gimme some air / Too-woo funky in he’e / Gimme some air / Open up the window, man.”
Further amelioration of funky occurred in the 1960s when it came to be used as a generalized term of approval for something unconventionally fashionable.
Dapper
By all appearances, dapper—an adjective used to describe usually men stylishly dressed or old gents having a lively step—is a 15th-century borrowing of the Middle Dutch dapper, meaning “quick” or “strong.” It is also akin to Germanic words meaning “heavy” or “stout.” Considering the meanings of its etymons, it’s puzzling as to how the word came to mean “neat and trim in appearance.” Etymologists tend to think that it developed from ironic, joking uses of the word.
Vogue
Vogue is a Middle French borrowing that 16th-century English speakers adopted in a now-archaic sense meaning “the leading place in popularity or acceptance.”
The French word also had nautical meanings referring to the action of rowing, which derive from the verb vogeur, meaning “to sail.” The source of that verb is Old Italian vogare, “to row.”
Nowadays, vogue generally refers to anything popular or in fashion at a particular time, such as the voguing dance craze in the late 1980s made popular by pop star Madonna. To “vogue” means to strike poses while dancing; the dance is influenced by the poses of models in fashion magazines, like its namesake.
Spiffy
Spiffy, meaning “smart, spruce,” occurs about mid-19th century, and is likely tailored from the dialectal adjective spiff.
The origin of spiff is not certain, but there is evidence of it being used in various grammatical forms dating to the 19th century. In dialectal English, it was used as an adjective to describe people and things looking smart and spruce; soon after, it gained slangy use as a noun for a well-dressed man. Additionally, an 1859 slang dictionary records that spiff was used in the clothing industry as a noun with the meaning “the percentage allowed by drapers to their young men when they effect sale of old fashioned or undesirable stock.” Later in the century, the verb form occurs to denote the act of sprucing things up. Evidently, the word was fashionable in the 19th century.
Dressed to the nines
The phrase “dressed to the nines,” meaning “dressed in a highly elaborate or showy manner,” is a specific application of the Scottish phrase “to the nine(s).” Early written evidence of that phrase appeared in the 18th century, and it wasn’t originally associated with one’s dress.
Its meaning is “to perfection; just right.”
It’s speculated that the phrase is derived from the game of ninepins, but the connection is murky: nine is the maximum score possible on any one throw in ninepins, but it is not a perfect score for the game. Nor does the number 9 pin have any special significance in the game. All in all, there is not a definitive explanation of the use of nine in “to the nine(s).”
“Dressed to the nines” pops up in the 19th century, and since that time it has become the most frequent construction in which the old Scottish phrase still occurs.
Dashing
The verb dash is believed to be from Middle French dachier, meaning “to impel forward.” It first appears in 13th-century English as a verb for literally—and, later, figuratively—striking something so as to break it into pieces, as in the now common phrases “dashed to pieces” and “dashed hopes.”
By the 19th century, the present participle dashing was being used as an adjective to describe someone or something that struck a person as being remarkably spirited or attractive in appearance or manner, as in “a dashing young horse” or “the debutante looked dashing.”
A century earlier the noun dash gained a similar meaning, “a flashy or showy display.” That sense is commonly found in the expression “to cut a dash.”
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