Author Topic: Common word missed for Monday Oct 18  (Read 2953 times)

Tom44

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Common word missed for Monday Oct 18
« on: October 19, 2010, 11:09:11 AM »
OK, I should have got the word anyway.  But I missed Nark.  The dictionary says it is a slang variant of narc.  Narc I would have gotten.  Is narc a common word?  Because if it isn't, there is no reason nark should be considered common.
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mkenuk

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Re: Common word missed for Monday Oct 18
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2010, 11:21:58 AM »
I'm not sure the two words are the same; 'nark' has been around in UK for ages meaning 'a police informer' or 'stool pigeon'. It also means 'to annoy' - 'It really narks me when.....'. I would say that both of these uses were slang and probably uncommon. 'Narc' on the other hand is US slang for 'narcotic'. Another word 'narco', as used many times in the TV series 'The Wire', is a slang term for police narcotics squads.

rogue_mother

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Re: Common word missed for Monday Oct 18
« Reply #2 on: October 19, 2010, 10:44:59 PM »
Narc and narco are not classified as common. If nark doesn't even mean the same thing, it shouldn't be common either. The sense of the word as MK describes it isn't used in the US.
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anonsi

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Re: Common word missed for Monday Oct 18
« Reply #3 on: October 20, 2010, 12:09:37 AM »
I think it is... I've heard nark used for someone who tells on others - not necessarily just to the police.  I've also heard it used in past tense, such as "She narked on me!" And I would also consider narc to be short for narcotic.

birdy

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Re: Common word missed for Monday Oct 18
« Reply #4 on: October 20, 2010, 11:27:44 AM »
Ahem, in my younger days, we all used "narc" to mean a police officer (often undercover) specializing in investigating illegal narcotics transactions.  I haven't seen the other spellings or meanings, nor have I heard it used as a verb.  If we wanted to say that a person had informed on someone, we would have said, "She dropped a dime on him."  I think the phrase is still in use even though pay phones now take quarters.

mkenuk

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Re: Common word missed for Monday Oct 18
« Reply #5 on: October 20, 2010, 01:50:02 PM »
Just to add a bit more fuel to the fire... Chambers gives the origin of 'nark' as a Romany word meaning 'nose' and quotes the phrase (well-known in UK) 'a copper's nark', an informer. There is also the adjective 'narky', mainly British meaning 'irritable'.
'Narc' (with a 'c') is from the US and means a narcotics agent.
The two words are not the same, and are not related.
MK

Alan W

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Re: Common word missed for Monday Oct 18
« Reply #6 on: October 20, 2010, 03:52:43 PM »
The two words are not the same, and are not related.

You're right, MK, but as the Online Dictionary of Etymology points out in its narc entry, "Sense and spelling tending to merge with older but unrelated nark". However, I'm not so sure that the spelling shows much tendency to merge.

In 2006, Cosmopolitan advised: "Don't be the workplace narc. Say something if you witness an illegal going-on, but it's smarter to bite your tongue when you spy a minor incident." Presumably, the "minor incidents" wouldn't involve narcotics.

And in the 2007 movie Juno, the teenaged title character said, alluding to her pregnancy, "I asked my dad and Bren not to narc us out to your folks, so we should be safe."

Evidently, narc is taking on the meaning of a snitch or informer, without necessarily relating to illegal drugs, or, indeed, anything illegal at all. So it overlaps with the meanings of the British nark, but without generally changing its spelling. Similarly, as a verb, often with out, it can mean to report on someone's behaviour, but not necessarily to the police. Norbert the Narc would be aghast!

Some dictionaries give nark as an alternate spelling for narc, but from what I can see, the K spelling is seldom used in the US, although that spelling is used in the earliest citation in the OED's entry for narc, a 1966 quote from Timothy Leary.

So, I conclude that Tom's initial post is valid. Nark is very seldom seen in the US, so it should be rare - along with narked, narking and narky. As for narc, it was changed from common to rare last year, which I think is also correct, as that word is little used outside the US (and is perhaps a bit of a niche word in the US anyway).

I should also mention that a number of dictionaries identify some of the meanings of nark - such as an annoying person or thing - as being mainly used in Australia and New Zealand. I'm not sure how true that is, but it isn't relevant to the question at hand.
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