janky

adjective

ˈjaŋ-kē 

jankier; jankiest

informal

: of very poor quality : junky

… most of the vehicles on Bismuth were janky unregistered pick-ups that reeked of fish water.

—Corwin Ericson

also : not functioning properly or adequately : faulty

Hahn was incredibly down-to-earth in her normal-looking home with her somewhat janky Wi-Fi.

—Chris Murphy

"My family had medical debt, because we live in the jankiest medical system in the developed world."

—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Examples of janky in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Your character uses an old computer and a kind of janky copy machine. —Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 22 Dec. 2024

Because even the screen that you're supposed to put on your hand was so janky. —Michael Calore, WIRED, 19 Dec. 2024

Still, not having to hunt down a power outlet at the airport or deal with those janky sockets on the plane will be worth the extra weight. —Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, The Verge, 30 Nov. 2024

The janky but oddly addictive Friday the 13th: The Game goes offline for good at the end of the year — an ignoble but perhaps inevitable fate for an interactive slasher that’s been plagued by problems since its rocky launch in 2017. —A.a. Dowd, Vulture, 13 Sep. 2024

Word History

Etymology

of uncertain origin

Note: Early records of the word indicate an origin in African-American speech. Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, hypothesizes that it represents "a regional, affected, or colloquial pronunciation of junky entry 1." According to Clarence Major, in Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang (New York, 1994), it is "probably a variant of jinxed" (see jinx entry 2).

First Known Use

1989, in the meaning defined above