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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

hunker.

To crouch or squat close to the ground or lie down.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈhʌŋkə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈhʌŋkɚ/General-American
  1. To crouch or squat close to the ground or lie down.

    intransitive
  2. To apply oneself to a task.

    intransitive
Where this word comes from

Originally Scottish. Origin uncertain, but probably of Germanic origin, perhaps *hunk- a nasalised variant of *huk- (compare Scots hoonk, hounk, variants of huk, hok (“to squat, crouch”); Scots hocker (“to crouch down, hunker”)), all of North Germanic origin, from Old Norse huka (“to crouch”), from Proto-Germanic *hūkan- (“to squat”), from *hūkkan-, back-formed from the iterative *huk(k)ōn-, from Proto-Indo-European *kuk-néh₂, from *kewk- (“to curve, bend”) (also the source of high). Probable cognates include Old Norse húka, Dutch huiken, and German hocken.

noun/ˈhʌŋkə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈhʌŋkɚ/General-American
  1. A political conservative.

    dated
Where this word comes from

Unknown

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.