Jack's post put me in mind of this. It's an extract from a post on a harmonica forum from ten years ago which caused some hilarity among the Brits on the forum. The guy who posted it, an American chap, died a few years ago, sadly, and was one of the best blues harp players ever. His grasp of one of our more pejorative bits of terminology was slightly less secure, as you'll read:

   ....With the students that I have, I try to teach them to play with intentions. I consider a player (of any instrument) to be wanker/wanking when he/she plays notes without intent. Playing notes for the sake of playing notes is wanking in my book. If you don't know what to play then don't play, there is nothing wrong with space.

In my experience, harmonica players are amoung the worst at wanking. Just because you can make a bit of noise or even be able to play a few runs on an instrument doesn't make you a player of that instrument nor does it make you a musician....

...As far as the bass goes, I'm just a wanker with little concept of where to fit in the cool stuff I can play.

Everybody goes through a wanking period as they evolve into a real player. And as the player matures the wankiness goes away and intention begins to surface. There is also a point where an advanced players gets bored with playing intentfully and then turns back to the chaos that is wankerdom. I won't name the players I have in mind but it's during the wankiness that one tends to lose the audience. In music, it's the height of arrogance and egoism when once stands there and thinks the audience wants to hear waves of shit spewing through your instrument.

:-)