Word Origins for $200, Alex

'Word Origins for $200, Alex' would certainly have put me in the minus column guessing the etymology of  "funk".

Based on no information whatsoever, I just assumed "funk" -- as in low, depressed mood -- came from the counter culture of the drug addled sixties.  Scored some bad stuff, now am in a funk.  One little syllable that simply exudes description.

Well, I was at least a hundred years off the mark.

I'm an avid fiction reader.  I like to get lost in a contemporary novel or two, then read a classic just to keep things balanced.

I'm currently reading Flaubert's "Sentimental Education", a morality tale of modern Parisian life in which the unheroic hero tries to fit into upper class society.  He earns a few francs, loses a few.  He loves her, loves her not.

Not a great story but I'm invested now and won't put it down until I find out what happens to the protagonist.
You may think I digress, but it's because of this novel that my thoughts went to "funk" at all.

During one of these hard times, the hero admits to being in a funk.  In the next chapter, his friend asks him what he's going to do about getting out of the funk he's in.

Funk?  A novel published in 1869 using words right out of the Haight Ashbury?  The ol' synapses were immediately askew.  Off to my trusty dictionary I went to find that people walking the cobblestone lanes of Flanders originally coined the word.

I know the Flemish produced some famous painters. Now I can thank them for their contribution to the American vocabulary as well.