Thanks, Ruth for that response. Good ol' Atlantic City, indeed. It was great to learn that we both are from that town {which loves to think of itself as a big city}!

With regard to "naff", I'm curious what the racial/ethnic origin of the children using that term in Atlantic City and for that matter, in the UK {as it seems that slang terms aren't always shared across racial/ethnic populations.

Fwiw, I looked up the term "naff" in which is for the most part a Black American dictionary on contemporary slang. It appears from your recollections that this website may have gotten the origin of that term wrong. On urbandictionary.com, definitions are submitted by website visitors, and scored as to what other visitors' consider is the best answer. All of the 13 definitions given for this word didn't mention the origin of this word, but of the 5 or so which did, the UK named and not the USA. Here's the number one response to date {which includes my editing of one word just because I'm real old school and puritanical} :


1. naff 152 up, 17 down

British slang, today meaning uncool, tacky, unfashionable, worthless... or as a softer expletive, in places where one might use "f*ck" as in "naff off", "naff all", "naffing about".

Origins of the word are disputed, but it appears to have come from Polari (gay slang), used to dismissively refer to heterosexual people. It was introduced as a less offensive expletive verb ("naff off") in the '70s UK television show, Porridge. "Naff off!" was famously used by Princess Anne in 1982.

Naff the naffing naffers

**

And btw, does anyone here know about Polari? With regard to the statement that naff "appears to come from Polari {gay slang}, would anyone provide information whether Polari is an American thing or an {a?} UK thing {and} or is Polari gay slang that is relatively worldwide?