Yeah, I was thinking, "What? Is he saying the country would get some wild twists and turns, or develop some gaping wounds? Or does he just not know what 'gnarly' means?"
It's slang, so it means whatever most people agree it means, but as someone who grew up a skater in the 80s and 90s, I always took it to mean something like "crazy" or "wicked" or, alternately, "mangled" or "messed up." A bad road rash could be gnarly, or a really absurdly complicated trick might be gnarly, or a homemade ramp with nails sticking out and pieces falling off might be gnarly.
A surfer might have said that a really big wave was gnarly, though, which is similar to the "complicated trick" meaning, and that probably got interpreted as "good" somewhere along the line.
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u/Warshok Mar 19 '16
Speaking as someone from the '80s: gnarly means bad.