The dictionary that pops up when I highlight a word on my Mac says for dank:
dank |daNGk| adjective
disagreeably damp, musty, and typically cold.
DERIVATIVES
dankly adverb.
dankness noun
ORIGIN Middle English: probably ofScandinavian origin and related to
Swedishdank ‘marshy spot.’
I tend to think of some basements as being dank. Seldom, if ever, have I used
the word as a direct description of weather. In days gone by during my youthful
explorations of the mountains of Western North Carolina, I might have escaped a
maddening and ongoing drizzle by ducking into a natural rock shelter. The
shelter might be dank, musty, etc., but not the weather outside it. Hope this
is slightly clearer than mud. I do think that if I saw the above mentioned
adverb— dankly—I might collapse with laughter, which, I suspect, would not be
what the writer intended.
But then I’m not sure I would have subtracted points from a pupil’s paper for
using it as your daughter did. Instead, I might have written a note in the
margin explaining distinctions as I understood them.
—Bob Whitmire
Certified Neanderthal
On Feb 17, 2015, at 9:58 AM, Charles Geilfuss <charles.geilfuss@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> I am seeking information on the proper use of a word. I have exhausted
> the dictionaries at home and found no help with online versions. In
> desperation I turn to the vast depository of English language knowledge
> that resides in the OM List.
> One of my children recently took a vocabulary test at school. The word in
> question is "dank". I don't know the exact wording of the sentence she used
> to demonstrate its usage, but something to the effect of "The weather is
> dank". The teacher subtracted points, writing in the margin that weather
> cannot be dank. This came as a surprise to me. Certainly other things can
> be dank: clammy hands, humid air, etc. I live in South Carolina where the
> weather is often dank. What am I missing here?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Charlie
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