I ran across a discussion of the word fink, both as a noun and a verb (and with out). While I recongize the word, it has a slightly archaic sound to me. I think of it as a '50s/'60s slang term, US East Coast in origin. What say all of you?

Yup - it feels like an old phrase to me, too. Generally I'd say "dirty rat fink."

I think gangsters in the 1940's movies referred to their enemies as "dirty rat finks"...

Being archaic myself, I sometimes use the term to describe "connivers and swizzlers"... hey, I think I just made up those words.

If I used the word "fink," I am sure my kids would laugh uproariously, telling me how very old I really am (which they know I hate to hear!)

Am I the only person here for whom the phrase "Rat Fink (tm)" is synonymous with Ed "Big Daddy" Roth?

Outside 'ratfink', I'd think anyone using it would be consciously echoing 'The King is a fink!'.

I'd forgotten about the King of Id. Thanks.

Has anyone else heard "fink" used to mean tell on someone? Also known, interestingly, and ratting on someone or ratting someone out . . .

Yes, I have. That was its primary meaning, I thought.

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Originally posted by neveu:
Am I the only person here for whom the phrase "Rat Fink (tm)" is synonymous with http://www.ratfink.org/?

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Maybe not synonymous, but it does stir a memory or three. So I take it you were a teenager in the 1960s?

Fink is a bit older than the '50s and '60s.

The OED Online first records it from 1834, meaning weaver: "One of numerous Asiatic or African tropical birds of the family Ploceidae, so called from the elaborately interwoven nests that many of them build. Also more fully weaver-bird."

It had taken on a new meaning by 1903: "A pejorative term of wide application, esp. a. An unpleasant or contemptible person. b. An informer; a detective. c. A strike-breaker."

In 1925 fink was recorded as an intransitive verb: "U.S. slang. To inform on."

Rat fink came on the scene in 1964: "One who is obnoxious or contemptible, esp. (a) an odiously pretentious person; (b) an informer, a traitor. Also attrib. or as adj. Hence as v. trans., to inform on."

Fink out appeared in 1966: "To withdraw or back out from some venture, esp. through cowardice; to ‘chicken out’. Also to fink out on: to fail in (something), to let (someone) down."

Tinman

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Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:

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Originally posted by neveu:
Am I the only person here for whom the phrase "Rat Fink (tm)" is synonymous with http://www.ratfink.org/?

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Maybe not synonymous, but it does stir a memory or three. So I take it you were a teenager in the 1960s?

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'60s, '70s, '80s, most of the '90s, 2002, 2003...

Fink and rat fink are terms that I associated with mad magazine in the late '50s and throughout the '60s. Fink is German for finch (families Fringilliadae, Estrildidae, and Emberizidae). I remember the models, having built one or two myself, but always though they were using a common term.