Back in grade school, we called the act of someone pulling someone else's pants down in public "shanking." I thought that was the typical slang until I went on to college or watched a movie and heard the term "pantsing" for the first time. (Seriously, I was at least 18 before I heard it called that.) And I then learned that a "shank" was synonymous with
shiv - a weapon fashioned in a prison, and getting "shanked" meant you got stabbed with said shiv.
Though actually, we weren't misusing term too terribly. Prisoners get shanked in the lunch line...and that's where kids would often get, well, "shanked" at Westside Elementary.
I'm beginning to think grade school wasn't meant to prepare me for upper-level education. I think it was meant to prepare me for five-to-ten. My grades back then would probably testify to the fact.
