What happened to finks?

Do you ever have a word pop into your head out of nowhere?

Just happened to me while enjoying a sunset Margareta on the deck. A little voice inside my head whispered the word “fink”. Got no idea where this came from. Perhaps a cosmic ray hit a neuron in my brain and caused a misfire as I wasn’t wearing my aluminum foil hat at the the time. Within milliseconds other neurons fired and I remembered that this word was in use way back in the 1970s. I remember Grandad was sure this was a nasty swear word and forbade its utterance in his presence and I remembered the phrase “the king is a fink”.

So what was a fink and why don’t we hear about finks anymore? I thought I’d look into this just for fun.

I quick Google search for “fink etymology” returned:

“Fink” (noun: snitch/strikebreaker; verb: to inform) is American slang from the early 1900s, likely originating from German, meaning a “finch” or “loose/dissolute person.”

Digging deeper, within a few minutes I had a timeline for the word’s usage thanks to a wonderful online tool called the Google Books Ngram Viewer. As you can see. if you bother to click on the friggin’ link, the peak usage for “fink” is about 1970. But Ngram provides more info. If you scroll down, you can search Google books from 1967 t0 1970. When I click on the link, the second book reference is entitled The King is a Fink by Brant Parker and Johnny Hart who were responsible for the Wizard of Id daily newspaper comic. Always one of my faves.

Still trying to find the reason for the demise of finks. If I find anything further, I will report it here.