Chunky

How to spell chunky

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce chunky

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chunky mean?

1. adjectiveThick, solid, and bulky, or containing solid lumps.

Chunky in a sentence

• She wore a chunky wool jumper that kept out the cold.

• The soup was chunky with potatoes and carrots.

Where does chunky come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Chunky is built on the noun chunk, which first appears in English in the late 1600s as a thick, solid lump or piece of something. Chunk itself is widely thought to be a dialectal variant of chuck, an older word for a lump or a chunk of wood, whose own roots are uncertain but probably native English. By the early 1700s the adjective chunky had emerged to describe anything short, thick, and solidly built, whether a stout person, a heavy boot, or a stew full of solid pieces. The spelling stays reassuringly regular: keep the hard chunk intact and simply add -y, so the silent trap most learners fear (a missing letter or a soft c sound) never actually arises. Because the base word and its sense of 'a solid lump' have stayed so stable, chunky has spread into modern marketing language, from chunky knitwear to chunky peanut butter.

How the word is built

• chunk (a thick lump or piece)
• -y (adjective suffix meaning 'having the quality of')