Hulk
nounA large, heavy, clumsy person or object, or the abandoned shell of an old ship.
How to spell hulk
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce hulk
What does hulk mean?
- nounA large, heavy, clumsy person or object, or the abandoned shell of an old ship.
- verbTo loom or move about in a large, heavy, menacing way.
Hulk in a sentence
-
noun
The rusting hulk of the old ferry still sat in the harbour.
-
verb
Two bouncers would hulk near the entrance every Friday night.
-
noun
He was a great hulk of a man who filled the entire doorway.
-
verb
The bodyguards seemed to hulk over every guest at the gala.
Where does hulk come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
The word descends from the Old English hulc, which named a type of heavy, broad cargo ship and may also have meant a hut or shelter. It is related to Middle Dutch hulke and Medieval Latin hulcus, all pointing to a large, unwieldy vessel, and some scholars trace the family back to a Greek word holkas meaning a ship that has to be towed. Over the centuries the nautical sense narrowed to mean the worn out body of an old ship left floating or rotting in harbour, the kind once used as a prison or storehouse. From that picture of a massive, useless hull came the modern figurative sense of any big, clumsy person or object. The compact four letter spelling has stayed remarkably stable since Anglo-Saxon times, which is why it gives writers little trouble.
How the word is built
- hulk (from Old English hulc: a heavy ship or hut)
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.