hunker
See also: Hunker
English
WOTD – 10 March 2008
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈhʌŋkə/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈhʌŋkɚ/
Audio (US) (file) - Rhymes: -ʌŋkə(ɹ)
Etymology 1
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”), [1] 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).[2]
Probable cognates include Old Norse húka, Dutch huiken, and German hocken.
Verb
hunker (third-person singular simple present hunkers, present participle hunkering, simple past and past participle hunkered)
Derived terms
Translations
To crouch, squat or lie down
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Etymology 2
Unknown
Derived terms
See also
References
- “hunker”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.
- Kroonen, Guus (2013) “hukan”, in Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 11), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 252
Anagrams
Dutch
Pronunciation
Audio (file) - Rhymes: -ʏŋkər
Anagrams
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