Actually, I haven't seen it in writing. I have heard it in conversation. When the first person was using it, she meant it to mean possibly fraudulent nurse applicants (the dishonest or unreliable definition). I thought she was making the word up - and it does sound like its meaning (what is that called again?). But then, another colleague used it in a similar situation, and I realized it IS a word. I should have looked it up the first time!
adjective, hin·ki·er, hin·ki·est.Slang. 1. acting in a nervous or very cautious way. 2. suspicious: Whenever he agrees with me, you know something hinky is going on! 3. snobbish; haughty. Origin of hinky First recorded in 1920–25; origin unknown
First Known Use of hinky 1956, in the meaning defined at sense 1
OED Online
quote:
hin·ky | \ ˈhiŋ-kē hinky, adj. Origin: Probably a variant or alteration of another lexical item. Etymon: hincty adj. Etymology: Probably a variant of hincty adj.
U.S. Colloquial (originally in African-American usage and Police slang).
1. Chiefly Police slang. Nervous, uneasy.
1956 ‘B. Holiday’ & W. Dufty Lady sings Blues xx. 181 If I started getting nervous or hinky, wondering, ‘What is this?’ he'd tell me to take it easy. 1957 San Francisco Chron. 27 Mar. 5/1 ‘Maybe he's hinky (nervous),’ said Inspector Coster. ‘Maybe,’ Maloney nodded his head, ‘let's just remember to keep quiet when they are making the deal.’ 1987 D. F. Wallace Broom of Syst. 434 If you're going to get all hinkey about Lenore and not let me express feelings, you can at least let me scope a little bit. 2000 P. Cornwell Last Precinct (2001) 287 If the hairs turn out to be Chandonne's, then I'm gonna have to entertain the idea she let him stay out there, and that's why she got all hinky about it
2. Suspect, questionable. Also: unreliable, not working properly.
1961 Flip Talk Dict. (at cited word) Hinky, not on the level. 1975 J. Wambaugh Choirboys vii. 93 ‘Driver of the pimpmobile looks hinky.’.. ‘Let's bring him down. Might have a warrant.’ 1992 E. Goudge Such Devoted Sisters iii. 445 The dishwasher had to go hinky, flooding the kitchen floor. 2003 C. Whitehead Colossus of N.Y. 145 Compass needles spin wildly, act hinky when asked to draw a bead on true north. 2005 Chicago Tribune (Midwest ed.) 17 Apr. v. 16/5 Shaw..smells a rat: ‘Oil companies thus far have not reacted to the market... It's a little bit hinky.’
hincty, adj.
Etymology: Origin unknown. U.S. slang.
Conceited, snobbish, stuck-up. Connection with clipped forms of ‘handkerchief-head’ (= an ‘Uncle Tom’) has been suggested but the phonetic development is incapable of demonstration.
1924 in W. C. Handy Treasury of Blues (1949) 144 We'll I am hinkty and I'm low down too. 1936 Esquire May 192/3 ‘She couldn't be mixed up in no murder trial. She's too respectable.’ ‘A hinkty hussy!’ said Sling. 1941 Examiner (San Francisco) 20 July PR 2 Jack, it ain't like me to be hincty so I'll be there with my boots laced tall. 1948 Capitol News from Hollywood Jan. 12/1 Patrons who dropped into the hincty, ultra-ultra Circus room of Santa Monica's lavish Hotel Ambassador. 1957 J. Kerouac On the Road i. xiii. 86 Wetting their eyebrows with hincty fingertip. 1969 C. Himes Blind Man with Pistol vi. 72 All those hincty bitches fell on those whitey-babies like they was sugar candy.
Draft additions September 2006
Originally in African-American usage. Wary, worried, suspicious. Also occasionally: unreliable (cf. hinky adj. 2).
1929 T. Gordon Born to Be xiii. 135 I was kinda hinkty and thought to myself, a fine, deceited lot, getting ready to can me and not telling me anything about it until the time came. 1932 Evening Sun (Baltimore) 9 Dec. 31/4 Hinkty, suspicious. 1960 S. Martinelli Let. 15 Dec. in C. Bukowski & S. Martinelli Beerspit Night & Cursing (2001) 119 I get a bit hincty as Stanley Gould calls it & don't like being out in the gloaming..so in I went. 1972 B. Rodgers Queens' Vernacular 107 Hincty, paranoid, afraid of being arrested or beaten. ‘Stop being so hincty; we haven't had Alice Blue clean up our act in weeks.’ 2003 New Yorker 22 Dec. 135/2 My car was acting hincty, so I had put it in the Ridge Street garage.
Ha, thank you tinman for the full details on "hinky"! This is a word long in my parlance, but in recent years the context I've seen simply implies a quality of being "off" somehow - too general, leaving to one's imagination whether we're suggesting social, sexual, or legal transgressions Your post reminds me that I originally knew it thro avid reading of crime lit, where it usually referred to a person who, under questioning, had shifty eyes or shaky hands or other tells that indicated he knew more than he was telling.
BTW, I never heard "hinky" used to mean conceited/ snobby.
Posts: 2605 | Location: As they say at 101.5FM: Not New York... Not Philadelphia... PROUD TO BE NEW JERSEY!
Your post reminds me that I originally knew it thro avid reading of crime lit, where it usually referred to a person who, under questioning, had shifty eyes or shaky hands or other tells that indicated he knew more than he was telling.