Punkess (pronounced puhngk-es)
A feminine form of “punk”.
1976: The construct was punk + -ess. The word was coined by fashion & pop culture writer Blair Sabol (b 1944) and appeared in the “Observations” column in the October 1976 edition of Vogue magazine. Punkess is a noun; the noun plural is punkesses.
In coining “punkess”, Ms Sabol’s grammar was sound because appending the –ess suffix is the orthodox way to feminize a noun. The -ess suffix was from the Middle English -esse, from the Old French -esse, from the Late Latin -issa, from the Ancient Greek -ισσα (-issa) and was appended to words to create the female form. It displaced the Old English -en (feminine suffix of nouns). The other often used suffix was–ette, from the Middle English -ette, a borrowing from the Old French -ette, from the Latin -itta, the feminine form of -ittus. Properly applied, it was used to form nouns meaning a smaller form of something and thus related to –et, from the Middle English -et, from the Old French –et & its feminine variant -ette, from the Late Latin -ittus (and the other gender forms -itta & -ittum). It was used to form diminutives, loosely construed. Because of (1) the link with the Latin –itta (the feminine form of –ittus) and (2) the historic tendency to conflate diminutive forms (ie smaller, lesser, inferior) with “female”, the association of the use of the –ette suffix with feminized forms emerged and on some cases entered standard English (majorette (female drum major); usherette (female usher) et al). The use became less common as gender-neutral language spread.
Vogue Observations (OB) page, October 1976. In 1976, a pair of raw-hide, knee-high boots, hand-stitched in (just) post-Franco Spain, listed with a RRP (recommended retail price) of US$68 and for “darkening and waterproofing”, the purchase included a tin of ”Graza de Caballo (pig oil, goose grease, and essence of almond).” Vogue remains an Oxford comma holdout.
So the grammar was (at least historically) sound but whether Ms Sabol’s choice was sociologically well-founded may to some have seemed dubious. The word “punk” has enjoyed an extraordinary range of use since the seventeenth century and although its origin (in American English) is murky, all uses thought forks of “punk” in the sense of “rotten wood dust used as tinder” (used thus since at least the late 1670s), evolving by the mid-nineteenth century to mean “something worthless”, personalized by 1910 to mean “an undesirable person (thus the link with petty criminals). By 1976 however, what Ms Sabol (indirectly) was referencing was the “punk rock” movement which, musically, had actually been around for almost a decade but although the term “punk rock” had in the US appeared in the US pop-music press as early as 1972, it didn’t enter mainstream use until 1976-1977 when the industry (and there have been discussions about cause & effect) realized they had a marketable commodity to package.
The punk persona of the 1976 punks was such
that the female punk musicians stereotypically would have found the notion of “punkess”
absurd; they were simply punks making their music. Of course Ms Sabol was writing in Vogue, discussing
not jarring music but the attitude of the women she called the harbingers of “punkess preakness”,
those for whom “toughness and aloofness” was not “their trade, but
rather feistiness and endurance”
In other words, punkness (for the Vogue
readership) describes a kind of “selective attitudinal transference”. It’s not correct to
say critiques of language disparaging or dismissive of women didn’t exist in
1976, the point being that such objections tended then variously to be ignored
or devalued, the critics marginalized but Ms Sabol’s crew of punkesses might
have approved of the label; a generation earlier, there were those who would
have called them “tough broads” so it
may have seemed like progress. Despite
that, “punkess” never caught on although “punkette” was used by a number of
publications, usually in the context of “young women who adopt the fashion aesthetic
of the punk subculture”.
“Punk” proved one of the more adaptable words in English, all traceable to the original sense of “something worthless”. The re-purposing included (1) “pre World War I (1914-1918) bread of not the highest quality”, (2) “driftwood”, (3) “toxic or poor quality liquor”, (4) “a homosexual”, (5) within the homosexual community “a (usually weak, young) man kept by a man for sexual purposes”, (6) a “ineffectual or worn-out boxer”, (7) “insincerity” (which may have been an imperfect echoic of the slang “bunk”, (8) “Chinese insect repellent”, (9) “certain tobacco products”, (10) “some strains of cannabis”, (11) a “novice” at a trade (much used in the construction industry). (12) “a criminal” (historically much associated with petty crime and “juvenile delinquency”), (13) “decayed or rotted timber”, (14) “a foolish or absurd argument”, (15) a type of incense, (16) “a fungus (polyporus fomentarius etc) sometime dried for use as tinder”) (ie harking back to the seventeenth century original), (17) “a harlot or prostitute” (which gains linguistic respectability for having appeared in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602): “This punk is one of Cupid’s carriers…” & Measure for Measure (1604): “She may be a punk, for many of them are neither maid, widow nor wife”, (18) “used or discarded fruits & vegetables”, (19) a 1970s pop-culture philosophy described as “hip nihilism”, (19) “a photographer’s assistant”, (20) a clipping of “punk rock” or “punk rocker”, (21) “the fashion styles associated with punk rockers and their audiences” (labeled “aggressively dumb” by some who didn’t approve), (22) in pyrotechnics, “a stick coated with a slow-burning paste, used to ignite fireworks, (23) “poverty and the poor”, (24) (as a verb) “to obtain” (often with a hint of the illicit), (25) (as verb) “to puncture a tyre” and (26) “a young elephant”. Under the Raj, a punkah (or punka) was “a fan, especially made of leaf or cloth and hung from the ceiling”. Punkah was from the Hindi पंखा (paṅkhā) (fan), from the Sanskrit पक्षक (pakṣaka), from पक्ष (pakṣa) (wing). Before the advent of electricity a punkah remotely was operated manually by a servant, known as the “punkah-boy” or “punkahwallah” (depending on age). Wallah was from Hindi -वाला (-vālā) either in the sense of “pertaining to” or (which etymologists think more likely) “man in charge”.
Celebration of Spring at St. Paedophilia’s—The Annual Running of the Altar Boys (2002) by Pat Oliphant.
Australian-born US political cartoonist Pat Oliphant (b 1935) used the device of a little penguin as his alter ego and that penguin’s name was “Punk”. Punk often appeared in Oliphant’s cartoons, making some wry comment or asking a question. One of the most controversial pieces appeared as “Celebration of Spring at St. Paedophilia’s—The Annual Running of the Altar Boys” in which Punk says: “I’ll call the bishop”, receiving the answer: “The bishop has first dibs.” Widely condemned by the hierarchy of the US church, some newspapers refused to print the cartoon and others didn’t add it to their more widely-distributed on-line editions. Oliphant’s cartoons are now held in the collection of the National Library of Congress.
Of cyberpunks and cybergoths
Punk has been used as a prefix to create literally dozens of forms and punkitude (the quality or state of being a punk; punkishness; adopting or projecting a punkish persona) captures the flavor of many, the construct being punk + att(itude). Also existing in many forms, the suffix –punk seems first to have been used in 1986 to create cyberpunk and it spiked in 1992 with the coining of steampunk (although some sources claim this was first seen in 1989). It’s used to apply the aesthetic or (perceived) attitudes of the 1970s (and beyond) punk subculture (loosely defined) on genres previously unrelated.
The youth subcultures “cyberpunk” and “cybergoth” had common threads in the visual imagery of science fiction (SF) but differ in matters of fashion and political linkages. Academic studies have suggested elements of cyberpunk can be traced to the dystopian Central & Eastern European fiction of the 1920s which arose in reaction to the industrial and mechanized nature of World War I but in its recognizably modern form it emerged as a literary genre in the 1980s, characterized by darkness, the effect heightened by the use of stark colors in futuristic, dystopian settings, the cultural theme being the mix of low-life with high-tech. Although often there was much representation of violence and flashy weaponry, the consistent motifs were advanced technology, artificial intelligence and hacking, the message the evil of corporations and corrupt politicians exploiting technology to control society for their own purposes of profit and power. Aesthetically, cyberpunk emphasized dark, gritty, urban environments where the dominant visual elements tended to be beyond the human scale, neon colors, strobe lighting and skyscrapers all tending to overwhelm people who often existed in an atmosphere of atonal, repetitive sound.
The cybergoth thing, dating apparently from 1988, thing was less political, focusing mostly on the look although a lifestyle (real and imagined) somewhat removed from mainstream society was implied. It emerged in the late 1990s as a subculture within the goth scene, and was much influenced by the fashions popularized by cyberpunk and the video content associated with industrial music although unlike cyberpunk, there was never the overt connection with cybernetic themes. Very much in a symbiotic relationship with Japanese youth culture, the cybergoth aesthetic built on the black & purple base of the classic goths with bright neon colors, industrial materials, and a mix of the futuristic and the industrial is the array of accessories which included props such as LED lights, goggles, gas masks, and synthetic hair extensions. Unlike the cyberpunks who insisted usually on leather, the cybergoths embraced latex and plastics such as PVC (polyvinyl chloride), not to imitate the natural product but as an item while the hairstyles and makeup could be extravagantly elaborate. Platform boots and clothing often adorned with spikes, studs and chains were common but tattoos, piercings and other body modifications were not an integral component although many who adopted those things also opted to include cybergoth elements.
Although there was much visual overlap between the two, cyberpunk should be thought of as a dystopian literary and cinematic genre with an emphasis on high-tech while cybergoth was a goth subculture tied to certain variations in look and consumption of pop culture, notably the idea of the “industrial dance” which was an out-growth of the “gravers” (gothic ravers), movement, named as goths became a critical mass in the clubs built on industrial music. While interest in cyberpunk remains strong, strengthened by the adaptability of generative AI to the creation of work in the area, the historic moment of cyberpunk as a force in pop culture has passed, the fate of many subcultures which have suffered the curse of popularity although history does suggest periodic revivals will happen and elements of the look will anyway endure.
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