Honky, Hinky, Hunky and Cranky

The word aingí (pronounced an-gee) is not that common in Irish. It means peevish or bad-tempered. To Daniel Cassidy, author of the absurd How The Irish Invented Slang, it was the origin of honky (as in cracker or white person), as well as hunky (a term for an Eastern European immigrant), part of honky-tonk (aingíocht tarraingteach), not to mention hinky (dodgy or suspicious) and the –anky part of cranky (crá aingí according to the Great Fraud). There doesn’t seem to be a word henky in English. If there were, we would probably have the full set of all the vowels. Obviously aingí is a far more useful and common term in the world of crap etymology than it is in genuine Irish conversation.

There is some doubt about the origin of these words in English slang but there seems to be no good reason to regard them as related to the word aingí or indeed any word in the Irish language.

If you’d like more information, here’s a link to a piece about the origins of honky and its links to hunky:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/756/whats-the-origin-of-honky

Here’s a link about the origins of hinky: http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2006/11/whats-the-origin-of-hinky.html

And here’s a Wikipedia article on the origins of crankdom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_(person)

Watch out for this line: Although a crank’s beliefs seem ridiculous to experts in the field, cranks are sometimes very successful in convincing non-experts of their views. Aren’t they just?