Things are getting a little hinky.

[Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker]

I’ve seen this word pop up a number of times in Jack Webb’s Dragnet and Adam-12 series. It appears to be cop (LAPD, at least) jargon. However, in the various contexts that I’ve seen it used, it seems to have a variety of meanings, such as “antsy,” “dicey,” “just plain weird” or something else entirely.

Anyone with any insight on what it officially was supposed to mean???

[August_West]

My dad (the cop) uses the word ‘hinky’ to describe someone that’s acting just a bit strangely or suspiciously. Cops get very good at reading body language, and if your body language is telling them something different than your words, you’re acting ‘hinky’.

Modern usage: “I was going to let him go with a warning but he was acting hinky, so I ran him for warrants.”

[JeffB]

From The Mavens’ Word of the Day entry on hinky:

Hinky is extremely rare in the sense ‘snobbish’, but it quite common as a police and underworld term for ‘wary’, and hence ‘nervous or jumpy’. The word is often found in crime novels. It is first recorded in the 1950s, though in reference to the 1940s; as with many such words, it is quite likely that it was in long use but went unrecorded owing to the primarily oral nature of the subcultures in which it was used.

[samclem]

Lighter agrees with the “Maven”. But adds, that it is derived from Black English, the word “hincty” which goes back to the 20’s-30’s. hincty originally meant snobbish, haughty, conceited, aloof. How it changed meaning is one of those wonderful things about language that we’ll never know.