Dank

How to spell dank

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dank

What does dank mean?

1. adjectiveUnpleasantly damp, cold, and often musty.
2. adjectiveIn informal slang, of very high quality, especially of memes or cannabis.

Dank in a sentence

• The basement felt cold and dank after the heavy rain.

• The group chat kept sharing the most dank memes all afternoon.

• Mould spread quickly in the dank corner behind the wardrobe.

Where does dank come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Dank is a plain, ancient little word with murky origins, first recorded in English around 1400 to describe something unpleasantly moist. It is most likely Scandinavian in origin, related to dialectal Swedish dank meaning a marshy or boggy spot and to the Old Norse sense of wetness and damp ground. From the start it carried the chilly, clammy feeling of cellars, caves, and rotting vegetation rather than the pleasant moisture of dew, and that gloomy flavour has clung to it ever since. The spelling has barely changed across the centuries because the word is so short and was never reshaped by Latin or French influence, which is why it looks reassuringly regular: it simply reads as it sounds. In modern slang it took an unexpected turn, becoming a term of approval for high quality cannabis and, later, for especially good internet memes, though the cold, damp original meaning remains the standard one.

How the word is built

• dank (single Middle English root meaning damp or wet); no prefix or suffix