A bit of a first for me today. Saw the word gnarly used in an exam essay I was marking. A nice moment in its way. Other than advising the candidate to avoid using colloquialisms I got to thinking about a couple of issues, the first of these being whether the term was being used correctly, given its meaning. The interesting problem here is, of course, what gnarly actually means since that's so dependent on context. I can think of three basic meanings: something being tough, difficult in an unpleasant manner; something being excitingly risky; something being cool (in the Fonz sense.) Fortunately I didn't need to make any comment on this since the broad advice regarding colloquialisms was quite enough in the way of feedback. But I wasn't at all sure what actually was in the writer's mind.
The second issue, that only struck me later in the day, related to the currency of the term. I sort of assumed it is current and would fall easily off the tongue of the average eighteen-year-old in this far place - at least one whose social media bubble stretches to the Americas, but then got to wondering whether it's now distinctly dated for young people. After all, as far as I can remember it became current in the late 80s as surfer slang. So that generation of speakers would now be very much middle-aged. Curiously it still feels 'new' to me since I've never adopted the term, even in a self-consciously comical manner.
I haven't looked up its origins yet - am saving this for a trip to the hard copy mega-OED in the library at work tomorrow - but I'm guessing it might be around the eighteenth century and connected with tree roots. Quite excited in my little way to find out.
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