A brief foray into etymology:

The answer to my question in the first paragraph of a post below about the one skank who sings, who fell chronologically between Britney and Jessica: Christina Aguilera.

Unfortunately, the question also brought up a debate about the appropriateness of the usage of the word “skank.” Other than my NSFW postings, “skank” is somewhere near the upper limit of the filthiness of the language I will use here.

Heh. "Filthiness." Anyway:

“Skank” actually has its roots in the Latvian “sçhrënk,” which is an adjective that translates roughly to “ease of usage.” Here’s the story (I don’t have a source; this is common knowledge to anyone who’s ever taken a comparative politics course in college, which is pretty much everyone):

Many of the machines and Soviet-made products in the East, especially farm machinery, were not unlike old Rube Goldberg contraptions, mostly due to the fact that the murderous police state would make vanish anyone who didn’t look busy. Once communism fell, though, things changed, and a machine that took a 35-step process to do something as simple as sort corn could be replaced with something a little more modern. Compelled by this development, processes to "shrink the process" were starting to take hold; this was the forerunner to the “Lean” manufacturing process being implemented in companies around the world today.

In the latter part of the 20^th century, once Western companies started marketing more to the former Soviet republics, the streets of Riga would be flooded with cheap products, and one of the competitive points that sellers would make would be in reference to the “sçhrënk” of the product.

Soon, other Western consumer habits began to take hold in the former Soviet republics, from Coca-Cola and MTV to gambling and, for the purposes of this story, prostitution. Johns would frequently speak of the “sçhrënk” of the woman they spent the previous evening with.

As globalism took hold and our world started to become smaller, “sçhrënk” evolved into the word we know today as “skank,” so as to avoid confusion with the word “shrink.”

Distantly related word: the semester I took my comparative politics course at IU, I roomed with a guy who was my childhood best friend. He would refer to as "skronking" the nighttime activities he would participate in with his girlfriend. (It's a euphemism!)

Related word: when “CSI:” is on TV, I often play a game I invented called “Skanko.” It’s like bingo, except the board is a 6x6 square instead of 5x5. Whenever the character Catherine Willows whines about the sorry state of her relationship with her daughter, or when she investigates the death of a stripper, or when she looks like she has indigestion anytime the topic of Sam Braun (her father) comes up, or when she is on the TV at all, or when a commercial is on and I accidentally think of how much I despise her character, I cover a spot: S-17 … K-21 … A-43 … N-54 … K-61 … O-75 … Skanko! During any episode of "CSI:", a game of Skanko takes about 6 seconds.

Unrelated word, or even an antonym: the greatest game in the history of “The Price Is Right” - both the game show and the slot machines I often play in Tunica - is Plinko. Plinko is good, clean fun for the entire family; Skanko is not.