Acting Hinky

I was curious about a word that seems in vogue among the younger set: "hinky." I'd heard it context and gleaned from that that it meant acting nervous or suspicious. Pretty close. I looked it up and I now share my new education with you. Turns out, the term is not so new, just newly cool. It probably originates in Black English as "hincty," which actually means, essentially, snooty. "Hinky" means suspicious in both senses - behaving in a manner as to evoke suspicion and to harbor suspicion.

Comments

[MrPeach]

Dude, I'm 44 and I used to use that term when I was in high school. It's rather surprising that you have not heard it before now.

[ding]

i read it back in an elmore leaonard novel in the 80's...

(i was back in high school back then, too)

[kim]

hinky, as in not acting right,acting weird, has been in my very-active vocabulary since somewhere 'round 1956. don't know anything about hincty. or cool.

[brooke]

well, clearly i had a colloquial blindspot.

[ms. jared]

i haven't ever heard that term. although i have heard "janky" which means "shoddy" or "crappy". as in "i can't believe i paid $1300 for this janky laptop."

have you heard that one? i have no idea where it comes from.

xoxo, jared
p.s. you were right. i LOOVVE my iBook!

[Carpenter]

I, too, love my IBook. It is extremely un-janky.

Oddly, people in Philadelphia and New Jersey just do NOT use the word "hinky." It sounds suspciously like something Gidget would have said, which leads me to believe it's some sort of weird west-coastism, like sprouts on a burger.

When someone out here is behaving suspciously, we usually simply refer to them as a "shady motherfucker," beat them up, and take their wallet.