Punk
Modern usage of the term
1. The noun punk these days often refers to a miscreant or subversive. 2. In prison slang, punk retains its urban street culture meaning and refers to a male who is treated as a sexual submissive. 3. A "punk" is also a small piece of kindling used for lighting slow-igniting substances. It is also sometimes a small stub of a cigar. This meaning is derived from the oldest uses of the term.
Terms derived from the word punk
Punk rock, named in reference to the above term, is a largely musical movement that arose in the late 1970s and reached its peak in the early 1980s. Etymology of the term is suspect, but it likely derives from the customers of the first venue for such music, CBGB's in the Bowery in New York City, who were alledgedly male prostitutes. The music was therefore 'rock for punks.'
See also: punk fashion, cyberpunk
External links: Open Directory: Punk Rock
Original meanings
The original meaning of punk is combustible material such as rotten, mouldy faggots of firewood or wood with Polyporus fungus growing on it. Alternative names: spunk, punkwood, funky stuff, amadou. The punkwood is dried or charred and used in a flint and steel fire. It may be used as tinder or char. When put into an already blazing fire, especially if not completely dried, this kind of material may cause explosive "popping" or "fizzing" sounds (See also: fireworks).
In Shakespearean slang punke is used as a word for a prostitute, interchangeable with the word "croshabell". For instance in "Merrie conceited Jests." by George Peele (undated but probably published in 1620) one of the jests is called "How George gulled a Punke, otherwise called a Croshabell."
This meaning (prostitute) remains in use to the 18th century. In the early Restoration (1672), Samuel Butler begins Hudibras by saying that the English Civil War had:
\n". . . made them fight, like mad or drunk
For Dame Religion, as for punk,
Whose honesty they all durst swear for,
Though not a man of them knew wherefore." (Canto I, lines 4-7)
\nIt is a meaning that has never entirely disappeared, though it has, in the 20th century, developed a specialized context.
Slang. A young person, especially a member of a rebellious counterculture group. An inexperienced young man. Music. Punk rock. A punk rocker.
Slang. A young man who is the sexual partner of an older man. Archaic. A prostitute.
Local meanings in Somerset
\n \nIn the English county of Somerset there are two traditional uses of the term "punk" (in local dialect): Firstly there is "Hunky Punk" meaning a stone carving of an ugly face on the walls of buildings, a variant of Gargoyle and secondly there is "Punkie Night" a local Somerset variation of Halloween.
\nExternal links:\nPunkie Night on National Geographic's '"Pulse of the Planet"', -
