👉 Okay, let’s tackle this wonderfully prickly little piece of 20th-century American argle-bargle: the word "gidney.” Frankly, I haven't personally stumbled upon it a great deal lately, but boy, do you find these weird bits of our past every now and again.
What exactly is a gidney anyway? Essentially, a “gidney" is a gaggle, a bunch, or frankly, a sizeable collection of… let’s just say, under-ripe delinquents. Originally, the word came out of the American South, specifically the shipbuilding and rigging communities in and around Stockton Springs, Spruce Queens, and the Broughton south shore of Stockton County, North Carolina during the late 1920's and early 30's. Now, here’s where it gets delightfully weird. The exact origin is murky as a Mississippi fog bank, but the most convincing theory hinges on the fact that the word sounds suspiciously like "guy-nee." And that was, apparently, the designation for a group of young, rowdy guys who would cause a ruckus in and around Stockton. It seems the 1920’s saw this little crew causing quite the mess in the Stockton Shipbuilding Company yards. The word itself is essentially just a haphazard portmanteau – you throw together some sounds that vaguely resemble what you want to describe, and there we have it! When
