Skank vs. Scag

I am over 40, way over 40. In my day “scag” meant junk, horse, heroin…I’ve forgotten all the names. It could also be conveniently applied to any other illegal drug that was shot up or snorted, not smoked, but my understanding was that properly, it meant heroin. A scaggy-looking person was someone who looked like she used, and rented herself out. I supposed it could have been shortened to scag.

In the universe of my high school days (but the terms were dying out):

Skank: Loose, unappealing woman. Not generally a nice person. Likely to be mildly evil.

Scag: Extremely evil, nasty woman. Will do bad things (including physical violence) just because. Not necessarily a loose woman. Scags enjoy getting into no-holds-barred fights.

A gooch is a taint, at least where I’m from.

In Australia (I was born in 1980) I always heard the word “scrag” not “scag”. Note the added “r”. It meant pretty much the same as “skank”, although “scrag” I think has nastier connotations, suggesting an truly unpleasant person even deep down, while “skank” refer to superficial qualities and a general lack of class and taste. No person with a brain uses theses words after the age of 15 or so, by the way.

So despite the added “r” it seems to fit with what American posters have said about “scag” and “skank”.

Can any posters from the UK comment on how “scrubber” and “slapper” relate to these terms?

Born in 1943, youngsters! In my day, both terms were used in SoCal. Skank was an girl of (hopefully) questionable virtue, while a scag was an unattractive female whose virtue was unquestionable, being nonexistent.

You might admit to knowing a skank, but never a skag.

Skanks smoked, and skags shot up…at least in our teenage minds.

Way over 40, me. Heroin = scag or skag.

Skank = undesirable female, often hygienically challenged.

1940 here and in my day in TX scags were ugly women that were often butt-sprung.

I was born in 1949, and live in Indiana. I learned, well past high school, that scag, or skag, meant heroin. I never heard it to mean a person. I first heard skank in reference to Christina Aguillera. I used to think I was hip, but I know better.

66 here. Grew up in Northern Virginia 1947-1966, and Ohio 1971-2010. A skag, growing up, was an unattractive woman. Never heard skank until I moved to Ohio, probably around the 1980s.

The OED has this to say about the terms–

And, about skank…

I’ve definitely heard of goosing being used for other than the butt pinch. Aggressive tickling is a good way to describe it, I guess, but you also have to catch the person completely offguard, and the duration is quite short. It was often used to start play fights amongst boys.

And I’m only 25.

Old fart here. I’ve only heard “skank”. Maybe it’s regional?

47, grew up in Indiana.

In my youth, we used scag much like skank is used now: trashy woman of questionable reputation. Scags tended to wear inappropriate clothing for the setting, smoked, cursed in conversation with everyone and had no qualms about starting a catfight. They tended to take up with boys from the wild side. Most of the scags in my high school dropped out to have kids by our junior year.

Yes scaggy, a person not necessarily a drug addict but looks it, you don’t want to touch a scaggy person, I have the opposite take on skanky I say someone openly sexual a person you want to be with.

I am here 9 years after the question was asked for one reason, because of someone I hung out with in HS in 1966-1968, whom I reconnected with recently and who has been rambling on about the man I married, by chance a boy from school I never saw her speaking to nor vise-versa, but going on as if they had been great big friends, even as if she knew him well past school, though by that time, he and I were married. I recall wanting, in those days, for him to think she was “pretty,” because she was my friend, and I thought she was. But like my own brother and most of the boys at that school, my future hubby (eventually father of our 5 children and grandpa to our 9 grands, though he wasn’t even my boyfriend in HS, and yet, things had indeed been stewing in the wings between us for months) described her as a SCAG, which meant really unattractive, in ways that can’t be corrected, and that go beneath the skin, an inward lack of class being just the tip of that iceberg. Yes, that is mean, I know, I thought so too at the time. So I got to wondering if anyone but me remembers that old word, scag, obviously the linguistic precursor of skank, a better word IMO, from way back then, and here I am finding out! I’m pleased! Thanks! But sigh it does stink how, the more things change, the more they stay the same. That is re. the friend from school who rambles about my guy (he is deceased and can’t be questioned now), and how much it bugs me. Hoo, boy.

Aside: In my experience back then, among cruel young people, we all know how it is, a young girl could be called a “scag” without doing a thing to bring it on herself. It was a JUDGEMENT, often a snap one. At least it was among the people I knew then, and of course it persisted far into our 20s if not farther. My friend is no “scag” now, she finished college, married rich, and it all shows. She did have a life I didn’t know about back then, because my mother was my jailor while all of my peers had normal permissive parents like everyone else in America but a handful like me. The other kids knew about her outside of school, and I had a few ideas myself judging from things I’d hear her say. I know she thinks I don’t remember all of that and so much more. I remember EVERYTHING, and say nothing.

In many cases. I view the ultra “Politically Correct” faux sensitivity that has enveloped this message board and 2019’s America as a whole as a net negative, but in this case, almost the ENTIRE thread is one big, stoopid, 7th grade level, “FUCK YOU” to women everywhere, Skanks, Scags, Hose-Beasts, Hoopties and virginal Choir Girls alike.

Smartest, Hippest, eh?

Man, that is a whole lotta… something, there.

Yeah, “scag” was the unkind word we used when I was a teen in the early 60s. At least there was none of the horrendous online sort of shaming that goes on today.

I only ever heard skank. A alternative for slut was hose monster…in Michigan, so maybe it. Drifted over, eh?

Back when I was young, I used a scag grinder, it was used to take the flash off castings, and to clean up welds. I always thought it meant ugly. Never heard of the drug thing.