Celebrating kinkiness

Kinkiness has been around for a hundred years.

Well, not kinkiness itself. Who knows when that started? But rather the word kinkiness, which was first used in print in 1924, according to There's a Word for It by Sol Steinmetz, a book I open each year at this time to  celebrate words that have just turned 100.

The Roaring Twenties were well underway by 1924, and anything goes, or went as the case may be — even kinkiness apparently.

It seemed to be a good year for slang terms, many of which were welcomed into the language and continue to be used today. Here are some of them: blah, flub, gotta, ho-hum, hooey, magic bullet, malarkey, naysaying, pix, racketeer, sexpert, shush, socko, stinko, stoolie, swoosh, two-time, uh-huh, wisecrack, wow and you-hoo.

That year brought us more serious words, too, such as beautician, headcount, house-train, hype, interstate, Leftist,  photocopy, pressure group, pull tab, superego and voyeurism.