Crunk

:This article is about the hip hop music subgenre and its related state of the mind. For information on the swear word, see Krunk (profanity).

Etymology

The term crunk itself is allegedly a portmanteau of the words crazy and drunk, and it may very well be. Although one entry in the Urban Dictionary says the word crunk may actually have Yiddish origins, Urban Dictionary is not a reliable source. There is no evidence crunk comes from the Yiddish and German words meaning sick or ill (krank in both languages), despite the phonetic similarity of the words (see this LanguageLog post for information on the high probability of chance similarity among languages). There is also no evidence it was brought into the Southern Black vernacular through the presence of European Jewish immigrant shopkeepers in black neighborhoods in cities such as Atlanta.

Related Topics:
Yiddish - Vernacular - Atlanta

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Conan O'Brien did a sketch and the joke was that Crunk was the most unimaginably offensive swear word ever, except it was so new that most people weren't aware how bad it was yet and they could get away with it on TV. He had clips of various people using it, including Ice T sitting in the guest's chair saying, "Wow, that's crunked up, man."

Related Topics:
Conan O'Brien - Ice T

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According to evidence provided by the Double-Tongued Word Wrester dictionary, crunk as a modern English slang adjective predates the musical genre crunk.

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Another theory suggests that it is the Southern/Ebonic, strong-verb past tense of the word crank, like Dizzy Dean's famous use of slud. This origin suggests that it does not exclusively deal with drugs and alcohol, but simply refers to acting crazy and energetic.

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Can be used in the sense of messed up as in these forks are crunk, and spread to messed up as from controlled substances

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