By WishingIWasInDaUP (Sur5er) on Tuesday, November 29, 2005 - 11:25 pm:
Yooperiniowa, Yes, Pank is a word, in the Dictionary of American Regional English. ;)
Pank (1937)
pank v [Perh blend of pack + spank, but cf Norw, Dan banke, Sw banka knock, tap, beat] chiefly nMI; also PA, Upstate NY To pack or tamp down; to crush.1937 in 1975 W3 File nwMI, Our snow is often too deep to dig a path, so we don snowshoes and stamp along snow, and finally it becomes hard and crusted enough to walk in without snowshoes. The process we call panking ' a path. . . It is especially prevalent among Cornish people. . . It is especially used in the northern part of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. 1957 Sat. Eve. Post Letters nwMI, Another word we have is pank. It means to pat down something, as, " He panked down the sand around his sand castle. 1966 DARE (Qu. KK21, When something hollow is crushed by a heavy weight, or by a fall: " They ran the wagon over the coffee pot and _____. " ) Inf MI33, Panked [pæKkt] it—also for like crushing a milk carton. 1966 DARE File nwMI, Pank = tamp. To pank snow in the hands to form a snowball; to pank the earth with a tamper. Used in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and in coal mining in . . Penna. 1967 DARE FW Addit nwMI, Pank [pæKk]—Pank the snow down. Pank the earth over the potatoes. Pank the pillow. 1972 DARE File nwMI, Pank [pæKk] = to pack down (snow) with a shovel. Current. 1975 Ibid nwMI, Pank [pæKk]—To tamp, pack; said of sand, snow, hair, etc. Gogebic, Ontonagon, Iron, Houghton Counties, Upper Peninsula, Mich. 1980 NYT Article Letters nePA, When I was a little girl growing up in Nanticoke, Pa., in the early ' 40 ' s, it was a must to (s)pank the snow with the back of the shovel when building a solid fort for a snowball fight. Ibid nePA (as of 1920s), When I was a child in Scranton Pennsylvania in the early 1920 ' s, we panked down the snow for sledding. Ibid NY, I told my grandson last month that his sand castle would be improved if he panked ' the sand down harder. In upstate New York, where I lived for many years, it was used in connection with snow but additionally with sand or dirt for planting. 1993 Detroit Free Press (MI) 30 July sec F 3/3 Upper Peninsula MI, Pank: compound word formed from " pack " and " spank. " Describes what you do with the sole of a boot or flat of a shovel to get snow to stay where you want. " Pank it down. 1997 NADS Letters nePA, Pank. . . We used it to mean " to flatten " or " to smoosh " and we use it in association with snow, clay (like Play-Doh), bread dough, etc. Ibid neMN, " Pank " is used in the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota . . [to mean] to pat down the snow.
Source: Dictionary of American Regional English, Harvard University Press
