Hunk

How to spell hunk

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hunk

What does hunk mean?

1. nounA thick, roughly cut or broken-off piece of something solid.
2. nounInformal term for a large, strong, sexually attractive man.

Hunk in a sentence

• She tore a hunk of crusty bread from the loaf.

• The magazine voted him the hunk of the year.

• He cut a generous hunk of cheese for the platter.

• Her new boyfriend is a genuine hunk who plays rugby.

Where does hunk come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Hunk first appears in English in the early 1800s, meaning a thick, clumsily cut piece of something solid like bread, meat, or cheese. It is generally traced to a regional or dialect word borrowed from Flemish 'hunke', meaning a lump or hunk of bread or meat, which is why it has the comfortable, blunt sound of everyday Low Country vocabulary rather than a polished Latin pedigree. The word stayed humble and physical for most of its life, always describing a rough chunk broken off a larger mass. In twentieth-century American slang it took on a second, admiring sense for a large, sturdily built, attractive man, picturing him as a solid 'hunk' of masculinity. Because the spelling is short and phonetic, the only real care a writer needs is keeping the silent-feeling 'k' that closes the cluster, just as in 'chunk' and 'trunk'.

How the word is built

• hunk (single root, no affixes; likely from a Flemish or Dutch word for a lump)