Etymology

hunk

H4U1N1K5

Today it means: A large or dense piece of something. Full definition →

West Flemish hunke
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

hunk · noun1

  1. West Flemish · borrowed fromhunke“hunk; chunk”
  2. English todayhunk

Probably borrowed from West Flemish hunke (“hunk; chunk”), of obscure origin. Probably from an earlier *humke, *humpke, a diminutive related to Dutch homp (“hunk; lump”), English hump, equivalent to hump + -kin. The sense of an attractive man is recorded in Australian slang in 1941, in jive talk in 1945.

hunk · noun2

  1. Dutch · derived fromhonk“the base in a game”
  2. English todayhunk

From Dutch honk (“the base in a game”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.