Hunch

How to spell hunch

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hunch

What does hunch mean?

1. nounA feeling or guess based on instinct rather than firm evidence.
2. verbTo bend the body or shoulders forward into a rounded shape.

Hunch in a sentence

• noun

  She played a hunch and arrived at the station an hour early.

• verb

  Try not to hunch over the keyboard all day at your desk.

• noun

  My hunch about the new supplier turned out to be correct.

• verb

  He would hunch his shoulders against the cold wind on the walk home.

Where does hunch come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

Hunch first appears in English in the early 1600s as a verb meaning to push, shove, or thrust, and its ultimate origin is genuinely uncertain; no clear parent word has ever been pinned down, which is why dictionaries label it as obscure. From the idea of thrusting came the sense of pushing the body into a rounded shape, giving us the familiar image of someone with a hunched back or shoulders. The noun meaning a strong intuitive feeling is much later and grew up in nineteenth century American English. A popular explanation traces it to gamblers who believed that touching a hunchback brought good luck, so a hunch came to mean a lucky tip or a guess that felt right, though this story should be treated with caution. Because the spelling is short and phonetic, the only real trap is the silent way the t-sound blends into the ch.

How the word is built

• hunch (single root; from an Early Modern English verb meaning to push or thrust, later to arch the back)