Tuesday, March 10, 2015

meaning - Can anyone authenticate the claim that "grungy" was used to mean "envious or jealous" in 1920s slang?

A recent question on EL&U asks "Where did the 1920s slang word "grungy" (meaning "envious") originate, if the modern word "grungy" (meaning "dingy") doesn't appear until 1965?" I ran Google Books searches and regular Google searches for contemporaneous examples of grungy in the sense of "envious or jealous" from the 1920s or thereabouts, and I consulted a number of dictionaries of slang in hopes of finding citations to actual instances of this usage, without success.



I did find, on the wider Internet, multiple virtually identical lists of "Slang of the 1920s" that included the entry "Grungy: envious" or "Grungy: jealous"—without citation of any authority or quotation of any historical example or identification of the originator of this list of terms.




So I am looking for answers to three questions:





  1. What published reference work has confirmed the 1920s usage of grungy to mean "envious or jealous"?


  2. What are some examples of this usage in contemporaneous (1920s, approximately) sources?


  3. What is the source of the samizdat-like list of "Slang of the 1920s" that is circulating online?






My chief concern is that there may have been no such usage as the online list claims; but if such usage did exist, I would love for EL&U to provide the authentication/attestation that is so sorely lacking elsewhere on the Internet.






UPDATE (7/28/14)



At this point, I think I've found fairly solid answers to the first and third questions above. The earliest printed source of the assertion that grungy meant "envious" in 1920s U.S. slang appears to be Tom Dalzell, Flappers 2 Rappers (1996). The online source of the much-copied list of "Slang of the 1920s" appears to be The Internet Guide to Jazz Age Slang.



Unfortunately, question #2 above remains completely unanswered: "What are some examples of this usage in contemporaneous (1920s, approximately) sources?"




Any takers on this question?

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