Sunday, August 17, 2014

Word of the Day

fink
 \ fingk \, verb;  
1.Slang . to inform to the police; squeal.
2.Slang . to act as a strikebreaker; scab.
noun:
1.Slang . a strikebreaker.
2.Slang . a labor spy.
3.Slang . an informer; stool pigeon.
4.Slang . a contemptible or thoroughly unattractive person.

Quotes:
You want me to find out what happened to all those kids I ran with, who didn't know I was studying them like bugs in a bottle. You want me to go down there seventeen years later and say, "I'm the guy finked  on you, remember me?"
-- Harlan Ellison, "Punky and the Yale Men," Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled, 1968

He held out for a while, laid low, and then, when the ranks started to break, he finked  and crossed the picket lines.
-- Allen Barra, "Joe Montana: Tarnished Hero," Big Play: Barra on Football , 2004

Origin:
Fink  emerged as a slang term in the US in the early 1900s. Its origin is unknown, but some etymologists cite the German word of the same spelling, which means "a frivolous or dissolute person," as a possible lexical ancestor.

Dictionary.com