zonky

comparative more zonky · superlative most zonky

1. slangVery fatigued; zonked.

   She was much better before the medicine made her all zonky.

   2011, P. J. Hoge, Z: Fourth in the Prairie Preacher Series, page 151

   1 more example

   And I feel kind of zonky this morning. Maybe I needed the sleep.

   2005, Susan K. Lorenz, Choose a Miracle, page 93

2. slangWeird, odd, eccentric.

   “I tried the State Employment Office and all the guy there does is show you unemployment figures for the county and shakes his head. Makes you feel zonky.”

   1979, Bernard Malamud, chapter 1, in Dubin’s Lives, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, page 22

   3 more examples

   He knows all the stuff that Arthur Schlesinger Jr., knows, keeps picking up brand new, ultra-contemporary stuff that nobody else knows, and arrives at zonky conclusions couched in scholarly terms.

   1965 June 27, Kurt Vonnegut, “Infarcted! Tabescent!”, in The New York Times Book Review, →ISSN, page 4

   […] she doesn’t have the precision of a Jean Arthur, yet she has some of that rueful, fluffy-in-the-head charm of someone whose brains are addled by her sexual impulses, and she adds the blur in the expression and those tremulous, zonky eyes.

   1977, Pauline Kael, “Drip-Dry Comedy”, in When the Lights Go Down, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, published 1980, page 361

   Gradually Simon’s powers of movement returned. He felt them coming back. It was a growing warmth, an inner blooming. He was able to say, “Guess I went a little zonky back there, huh?”

   2005, Michael Cunningham, “Like Beauty”, in Specimen Days, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 242