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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

lurk.

To remain concealed in order to ambush.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/lɜːk/Received-Pronunciation/lɝk/General-American

  1. To remain concealed in order to ambush.

  2. To remain unobserved.

  3. To hang out or wait around a location, preferably without drawing attention to oneself.

  4. To read an Internet forum without posting comments or making one's presence apparent.

    Internet

  5. To saddle (a person) with an undesirable task or duty.

    UK · slang · transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English lurken, from Old Norse *lúrka, possibly from Proto-Germanic *lūrukōną (“to be lying in wait, lurk”), equivalent to lour + -k (frequentative suffix). Cognate with Norwegian Nynorsk lurka (“to sneak away, go slowly”), dialectal Swedish lurka (“to dawdle, be slow in one's work”), Saterland Frisian lüürkje (“to look secretly, spy”), West Frisian luorkje (“to lurk”), Middle Low German lûrken (“to deceitfully stalk”).

noun/lɜːk/Received-Pronunciation/lɝk/General-American

  1. The act of lurking.

  2. A swindle.

    Australia · UK · obsolete · slang
Where this word comes from

From Middle English lurken, from Old Norse *lúrka, possibly from Proto-Germanic *lūrukōną (“to be lying in wait, lurk”), equivalent to lour + -k (frequentative suffix). Cognate with Norwegian Nynorsk lurka (“to sneak away, go slowly”), dialectal Swedish lurka (“to dawdle, be slow in one's work”), Saterland Frisian lüürkje (“to look secretly, spy”), West Frisian luorkje (“to lurk”), Middle Low German lûrken (“to deceitfully stalk”).

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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.