Bunk

How to spell bunk

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bunk

What does bunk mean?

1. nounA narrow built-in bed, often one of a pair stacked one above the other.
2. nounTalk or writing that is empty, foolish or untrue.
3. verbTo stay away from school or work without permission, or to slip away.

Bunk in a sentence

• noun

  The children argued over who would sleep in the top bunk.

• noun

  The salesman's promises turned out to be complete bunk.

• verb

  The teenagers planned to bunk off school on Friday afternoon.

• noun

  Each cabin on the ferry had a fold-down bunk against the wall.

• noun

  She dismissed the rumour as utter bunk.

• verb

  He would often bunk off work to watch the cricket.

Where does bunk come from?

Language of origin: Other

The oldest, everyday sense of 'bunk' as a sleeping berth appears in English in the early 1800s and is of uncertain origin; the most popular explanation is that it is a shortening of 'bunker', a Scots word for a chest, bench or built-in sleeping platform that may itself trace back to a Scandinavian source meaning a heap or bank. The completely separate sense of 'bunk' meaning empty talk or nonsense has a much more colourful and well documented history: it is a clipping of 'bunkum', which in turn comes from Buncombe County in North Carolina. Around 1820 a long-winded United States congressman insisted on making a pointless speech only so he could tell voters he had spoken 'for Buncombe', and the county name quickly became a byword for hollow, crowd-pleasing rhetoric. The shortened form 'bunk' caught on in American slang and was famously echoed by the industrialist Henry Ford, who reportedly declared that 'history is bunk'. The chiefly British verb 'to bunk off', meaning to play truant or slip away, grew up later still and is probably connected to the idea of clearing out or doing a 'bunk'. Because the word is short and spelled exactly as it sounds, its varied histories have left no spelling trap behind.

How the word is built

• Single monosyllabic root with no affixes; the 'nonsense' sense is a clipping of 'bunkum', itself from the place name Buncombe