wanker

   The hero of Jake’s Thing, by Kingsley Amis, is subjected to this insult and soon afterwards says to a colleague:

   ‘Damon, what’s a wanker?’

   ‘These days a waster, a shirker, someone who’s fixed himself a soft job or an exalted position by means of an undeserved reputation on which he now coasts.’

   ‘Oh. Nothing to do with tossing off, then?’

   ‘Well, connected with it, yes, but more metaphorical than literal.’

   Partridge says in his Dictionary of Historical Slang that the ‘correct’ form of this slang term should be ‘whanker’, adding that ‘to whank’, in the sense of masturbate, came into use in the late nineteenth century.

   No etymology is offered, but it is tempting to connect the word with ‘whanger’ (also ‘whang’, ‘wan’'), a slang word for the penis.