Funky

[Arthur Comings <atc -at- CORTE-MADERA -dot- GEOQUEST -dot- SLB -dot- COM>]

> What does "funky" mean?  Is it slang?  Is it confined to
> converstaion? . ..   What is a funky restaurant?

If you toss your sweaty running shoes into a closet every time you take
them off, they'll get pretty funky after awhile.

As with  any slang term, "funky" can have a wide range of meanings.
Like the way "bad" can, if you've kept an eye on that.

Probably "earthy" is the closest you can get to a one-word definition,
but it depends what the term is applied to. A restaurant, since it
contains things that could get bacteriologically interesting, would at
least be casual and tend toward collards and ribs if it were termed
"funky," but you also might mean that they never cleaned the tables or
swept the floors very well. A tune? It'd be soulful.  Not glitzy
pop-soulful, but rough around the edges with lots of bass, and probably
some fairly explicit lyrics.

I caught myself describing some document or plan as "funky" the other
day; I meant that it appeared to have some substance, but just didn't
cut it. Not really pretentious, but somewhat overblown and, in the
final analysis, terminally faulted.

A person could call just about anything "funky" if it felt comfortable,
down-home, and unpretentious to them. At the same time, someone else
might use the term to mean "scruffy" or "unkind" -- cf. "Ain't that a
funky way to treat somebody?"





Arthur Comings

GeoQuest (a long way from El Monte Legion Stadium)
Corte Madera, California
atc -at- corte-madera -dot- geoquest -dot- slb -dot- com