You can win one of our punkgirldiaries T-Shirts (in whatever size or colour you choose) if you’re a winner in our first lockdown weekend competition.
Write a definition of punk in just 10-30 words.
Prizes for the best overall definition and the best short definition in fewer than 15 words!
email punkgirldiaries@gmail.com or send DM on twitter https://twitter.com/punkgirldiaries by 9am UK time on Monday 18th May. Winners announced Friday 22nd May.
Dictionaries before about 1990 often don’t refer to punk as music at all. It seems to mean flaky wood, a prostitute, homosexual, inexperienced kid or something easily ignited.
Many modern dictionaries focus on the sound of the music:
a loud, fast-moving, and aggressive form of rock music, popular in the late 1970s
Oxford Dictionary – 14 words, and a fair definition of ‘punk rock’ music – but not of ‘punk’ as a concept.
Certainly, we at punkgirldiaries didn’t get into punk because of ‘aggressive music’ – there was so much more to it.
Cambridge Dictionary goes with 26 words:
a culture popular among young people, especially in the late 1970s, involving opposition to authority expressed through shocking behaviour, clothes, and hair, and fast, loud music
So, here’s your challenge:
Compose a better dictionary definition for what ‘punk’ means. You don’t have to do it in precise dictionary style – you could be creative and still win. However, we aim to start lobbying dictionary publishers to give a wider and less ‘aggressive’ focus for punk once we establish something!