nice!

Dear sr

boy u got my heartbeat runnin away
beating like a drum and its comin ur way
cant u hear that boom, bloom, boom, boom,bloom,boom,bass
he got that super bass
got that boom,bloom,boom,boom,bloom,boom, bass
yeah thats that super bass

taffety punk,in spanish they have a taffetan material aroud 1950
used in the confection of over puffed dresses used for shows or weadings.

How does the word “punk” relate to a term such as Steampunk, where “punk” seems to mean something nearer to “technology level”? Did someone think it was “something worthless” and the name stuck, or is it from a different etymology than “punk rock”?

Keep it up! And put more effort. I love that…

Steam punk is a type of urban fantasy with steam age technology. This a play on the term cyberpunk which is a high technology dark urban fantasy (think Blade Runner or Max Headroom) . “Cyberpunk” was the title of a book by Bruce Bethke that was a forerunner in this genre. The book title refers to a Cyberneticly enhanced punk. In the setting of the book there is a fictional subculture of the future where punks gain cybernetic enhancement, commit crime, raise hell.

steampunk is a variant on cyberpunk, which is in reference to a style of fiction influenced by modern and futuristic technology and the visual aesthetic of punk (or what a computer geek would think punk is like, anyway). steampunk is essentially a futuristic version of the past, where modern technologies are achieved using of-the-time technologies; a genre based on anachronism

As to the word “punk” appearing in Shakespeare, it does appear in All’s Well That Ends Well, but the reference is to a “taffeta punk” rather than a “taffety” version of same. Now “punk” also appears in other Shakespeare plays as noted below:

All’s Well That Ends Well; Act 2, Scene 2
(Clown is a servant to the Countess of Rousillon.)
Clown – “As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an at torney, as your French crown for your taffeta punk,….”

Merry Wives of Windsor; Act 2, Scene 2
Pistol – “This punk is one of Cupid s carriers -….”

Measure for Measure; Act 5, Scene 1
Lucio – “My lord, she may be a punk ; for many of them are neither maid, widow, nor wife.
Lucio – “Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whipping, and hanging.”

Observe th general punishment for marrying one in the last reference above.

Dry tinder was often called “punk-wood” and oft times when going camping one was asked “Did you bring any punk-wood?”

As to “Punk Rock” I would put the suitable retribution as in the same catagory as marying one, taffeta or otherwise.

Ali Dogan – I presume you were starting with “Dear Sir” and collapsed in a quasi-coma on your keyboard due to a “punk”. In John R. Bartlett 1877 – Dictionary of Americanisms a “punk” is listed as a New York word for “A punch or blow with the fist”. “To punk” being to actively do a punch or blow with the fist a la New York 1877.

You might like to know that the formal “Sir” was a title formerly applied to priests and curates generally around Shakespeares time.

Good day Sir.

Anybody out there remember what we used to ignite (when they weren’t illegal) FIRECRACKERS with, one at a time? It resembled, but smaller, the “cat tails” that grew in some swampy areas in Queens County, NY.
The more modern lookalike is the familiar incense stick. We just called it a PUNK!

good question

In the first few decades of the 20th Century, the term “bimbo” actually referred to a male who was doing a soft office job instead of something “manly” which would get him dirty and callused. Later, it would come to be used to refer to a simple-minded young woman, a precursor to the “blonde” jokes of today.

I heard the term in the 50’s sometimes used to indicate hipsters w/ducktail haircuts.etc. as sissy. That connotation caught the writer, William Burrough’s attention when in converstation he questoned the connection to new music, saying he had known its use in jails & junky criminal street to connote sexual submission. His lingustic & drug mentor, Herbert Huncke, would have agreed.

Steampunk is an elaboration on the ‘cyberpunk’ genre of sci-fi where cyberpunk implies a youth/street culture of the future dominated by hi-tech gadgets and hacking. ‘Steampunk’ refers to an ‘alternate’ universe where Victorian technology was never ousted by electronics and the micro-chip – computers rather than hi-tech electronic devices are here more akin to Charles Babbage’s mechanical ‘Difference Engine’. (Look it up!)

We used to burn a coiled material called punk as mosquito repellant. The smoke was profuse and repelled the mosquitoes. You would light the end which slowly burns down the length of the coil.

I thought punk was also in the 1950s with the emergence of Brando, James Dean, and “West Side Story” types….

Time will tell, just as well. That actor fella, asston whatzis name, married to Bruce’s wife, punks with a hidden camera. Oui?

RE Elend:
The term “Steampunk” was, of course, coined to refer to the sci-fi subgenre of “the future as it was once imagined,” such as by the writings of Verne and Wells: Victorian look or feel with steam-based or 19th century technology.
It’s called STEAMpunk to differentiate it from CYBERpunk, the sci-fi subgenre that became prominent in the 1980’s through the writings of Gibson and others: literature featuring cybernetic implants or enhancements, usually in low-life characters, i.e., punks (as we know them).

SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i-i i_i i-i

The missing link here–and I have no idea how anyone with the slightest interest in this subject missed it–is that at least in the early 20th century US, “punk” meant specifically a boy or young man used by an adult man for sexual purposes. It is easy to see how the meaning of “whore” could evolve into this meaning, and equally easy to see how it could then evolve into a generally insulting term for a ratty, physically unimposing young guy.

I recall as a kid, burning very slim sticks of fragrant wood that were called “punks.” The smoke was very aromatic and sweet-smelling, like incense. Kids bought them at the store, like penny candy.

I also recall my own evolving use of the term. Initially, it meant someone small, short, scrawny (recall Punky Brewster?). To say a kid was a punk meant he was short and slight for his age. Possible offshoot of the endearment “punkin”?

For my peers and me, the word didn’t start to mean a trouble maker type until later, after the musical revolution, I believe. And Shakespeare using it to demean women… why am I not surprised! Man must have 100 synonyms for the word “whore.”

Anyway- to answer the question posed in article title, the answer, it would seem, is “Nothing”!

Very interesting lesson for the day!

Shakespeare is great in inventing words..he’s the Einstein of Literature. He invented 1700 words and some of those I think are “assassination”, ‘invulnerable”, “accommodation”, and even phrases like “green eyed monster” and “naked truth”.
.

I wrote “punk wood won’t burn” in a poem about stealing firewood from Paul Bley’s (keyboard jazz) woodpile in 70’s thinking it would have the association of worthless or sissy. I first heard it in 50’s as street hipster with ducktail & modified zoot.The squares would sometimes call us punks. I wore Brando black leather jacket then too; the dress survived! Last time Grant Hart (formerly Husker Du) visited, he was wearing one! The Mohawk replaced the ducktail hairstyle, but the street “wildside” connotation lives on in Lou Reed’s song for Candy Darling, and in music groups such as Stooges & The Cramps. Odd that the Dictionary of Etymology does not indicate derivations, but seperate meanings and has funk with second meaning & funk denotes music as well. Charles Plymell

Im going to start calling my friends “punks.” Meaning “Prostitute!”

PUNK, used to light SPARKLERS and PICCOLO PETES etc., by smoldering, in the ’60’s was reputedly dried camel dung, whence, PUNK, referred to a cigarette or anything there-like, or even to the smoker as an extension thereto….

FUNK, and FUNKY, come from, FUNCTIONAL, in a slang sense of ‘minimally’….

SHAKESPEARE ROCKS!

Firecracker lighters and mosquito coils come from the reference to rotten wood, something which would smoulder but not burst into flame. The firecracker lighters were fully named, correctly, “punk sticks,” but verbal shorthand turned them into simply punks. They had a nice aroma to them and modern incense sticks are just punk sticks with fragrance soaked into them. Ancient cannons and muskets prior to matchlocks were set off with them, especially on ships. Despite the flaming torches you’ve seen in movies, burning down a wooden ship was a real hazard to be avoided. The mosquito coils did indeed throw off a lot of smoke and irritated people more than they repelled insects. I believe OFF is the company which did the incense stick trick with them. They added a chemical that the bugs didn’t like and produced a coil of punk with much less smoke. I think they’re still being made and sold.

I don’t think that Shakespeare coined the term assassin. I believe it came from the Middle East and referred to the fact that paid murderers often used hashish prior to committing their nefarious acts.

I heard on television a few years ago that it mean’s Proletarian Urban Nihilistic Kids. I do agree with Hot Word, the new origin of the word probably depends a lot on what Dave Marsh was thinking when he used this word.

The “punk” in Cyberpunk was referring to the fact the authors in the genre were young upstarts making a drastic break from the established science fiction themes of the day…

Scotie McBoogerballs – I ascertain by your appellation that you and your friends are of like nature. Presumptively, therefore, that as leader of those within your coven you exclude your enemies. Prythee, who might they be?

Ha! Leave it to Mr. Plymell to leave the same comment about Burroughs that I was going to make! Apparently, PUNK Magazine got its name from Burroughs, and that’s what led to Burroughs explaining his usage of the word (see Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk).

Burroughs is also credited with influencing cyberpunk.

While the modern day use of the word ‘punk’ might suggest anarchistic youth, William Shakespeare used the term quite differently over four hundred years ago. So how did this word evolve from a derogatory term aimed at a woman to a derogatory term aimed at a young man?

I think it is important to remember that in Shakespeare’s day, young men played the roles of women. This would be an excellent candidate as our language is both living and pliable. I like the other comments, too.

Yes, but what of Punky Brewster?

‘punk’ i would say i hate the sond of the word

I remember hearing the word “punk” used to mean defective or of poor quality. Also, like autodact7 at at 8:21, we used it to refer to the special stick or piece of smoldering rope used to light a firecracker. These devices would not burn with a proper flame, but would smolder for a long period of time, i.e., burn poorly.

@ zaraf

Just because you heard it on television, doesn’t legitimize the meaning. Anyone with a reasonable facility with the language can create a backronym, which is just the subject word, formed from the initial letters of carefully chosen words which give an acceptable meaning. In England, especially in London, there are whole gangs of violently rowdy young men known as Chavs. Newspeople and police were mystified as to where this term came from and many theories were advanced. The most widely accepted was that it was a backronym of Council-Housed And Violent. Turns out it all started in Manchester,where, for some reason, there was a large influx of immigrants from Armenia. The word Chav is simply an Armenian word which translates into English as PUNK. No acronym involved.

Who cares what he said? I don’t listen to anyone and don’t regret any of it. It’s what being a “Maverick” is all about.

People should be able to listen or ignore anyone they want, and we don’t need the government to tell them which. All we need the government for is a diversion so the rich guys can stay rich.

Now now, all you candidates stop your bickering. You all work for me and my friends, and no matter what happens in the next election, we’ll be fine because the other guys work for us too. It’s the dumbass public that will suffer, because they were too stupid to stop wasting their time on Dictionary.com and pay attention to real issues that affect them in their everyday lives.

papadoc – “I don’t think that Shakespeare coined the term assassin.”

Your quite correct.

“Cannabis” whose fibers were once used for making hemp nautical rope, and sometimes known as “hemp”, is now generally referred to in certain quarters as “madicinal marijuana”. It has an interesting madicinal marijuana word history to tell. In Persia and Syria, about 1090 AD to 1272 AD or so, were a group of “hashish” eaters. Hashish eaters is the translation of the Arabic ḥashshāshīn. These were initially followers of the “Old Man of the Mountains” (in Arabic shaik-al-jibal) whose name was Hasan ibu-al-Sabbah, a leader of a fanatical Ismaili Muslim sect. Hashish is the flowering tops and leaves of Indian hemp (medicinal marijuana) smoked, chewed, and eaten for its hallucinogenic effects. However these folks used a more distilled version with more “kick” for the ounce (Troy). The dried resinous exudate of the dried flower tops of the female hemp plant, containing larger amounts of the active whoop-de-do chemicals, and so this group concentrated it alone and ate it (more potent and faster acting through the stomach and intestine walls). Hence, they were called “hashish” eaters.
Hallucinating marijuana has the effect of lowering a person’s perception of risks in a dangerous situation, part of the hallucinating effect. Thus, the “hashish” eaters became assassins, since they would willingly assassinate somebody with lots of bodyguards from which to a non-hallucinating person there was no hope for the assassin to escape alive after the assassination. Of course they did it anyway to the last munch.
But it is out of a Westernization of the Arabic word ḥashshāshīn (eaters of hashish) that the word “assassin” was coined. And so to the murderous Persian medicinal marijuana dopers of the 12th century we are indebted to a new and useful term in the English speaking tongue.

@archon
My dad comes from an area where there is a large amount of irish travellers, and he picked up a lot of the lingo.
Chav is actually a derivative of the slang word chavvie, which in romany terms is a young male.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this could be used as a derogatory term for a misbehaving or sportswear wearing young man

The interst in etymology seems live & well in some interesting threads of Elijah Wald; A.Hastings; notjoemana;@archon,et.al. I don’t follow the branch to assains, but I’ve heard the term in connection with firecracter lighters, etc. As a footnote to the (stand-ins) for Koch Bros. who organised a symposium for Birchers at Wichita U. in early 50’s. I was present as ducktail hipster, sometimes called punk, even pre-Elvis, so my usage goes way back. The Bros, went under the radar since anything you buy today is somehow connected to their chemical fortunes, but they have recently resurfaced probably because the nation is too gone to care. The original link was sent to me by Mike Watt, bass spanker for Iggy, and a mover of the direction of music with his famous punk band of the 80’s The Minutemen.

thats awsome something new ;o

taffeta is actually a very frilly (similar to tulle) type of material that is notoriously cheaper to make and kinda looks that way too :/

Shakespeare rocks.

Shakespeare so rocks.

Punk has been used in American prisons to refer to the receiver of anal penetration during anal intercourse. A punk is often an unwilling participant who is cowed or coerced to participate. Hence Punk is synonymous with Bugger in British parlance and punking is synonymous to buggering. It is used as a pejorative almost exclusively in American dialect, except when referring to social or political protest as in the case of Punk Rock and literary genre’s like Cyberpunk and Steampunk.

“Punk” prior to its general usage as “hoodlum” was a common 20th century prison term for a young male on the receiving end of a homosexual encounter.

Oh, how I dislike the cliche, “that would change forever.”

I was immediately thinking of Huckleberry Finn and the book’s use of the term “spunk water”, being the foul water in the bowl of a rotten stump used in a potion, if i remember correctly. thanks a lot for the good read

Interesting about the Dave Marsh reference. Yet another one of those instances where a term is invented and then something is found in order to fit the definition…

Likely related to “The Scottish, spunk, meaning “a spark,” is a 1530s reference to burning embers and ashes”, around 1970 in southeastern Massachusetts we called the smouldering sticks used to light fireworks fuses “punks”. They were pretty much stick incense without the scent.

I can’t be sure where we picked the word up, but it was likely my Father, who was born in 1925 and grew up in Providence, RI. His family never particularly identified themselves as being of any particular national origin, although the paternal branch of the family was French Canadian.

As a few people have said, I thought it was more to do with ‘punk’ as in a young homosexual, softened and generalised to mean arrogant, worthless young men (‘you little punks!’).