Perk

How to spell perk

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce perk

What does perk mean?

1. nounAn extra benefit or advantage that comes with a job or position, beyond the salary.
2. verbTo become more cheerful, lively, or alert, often followed by 'up'.

Perk in a sentence

• noun

  A company car was the best perk of the new role.

• verb

  A strong coffee can perk you up after a long shift.

• noun

  Free gym membership is a popular perk at the firm.

• verb

  The plants began to perk once the rain returned.

Where does perk come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Perk wears two hats in modern English, and they arrived by different roads. The most familiar sense today, a benefit that comes with a job, is simply a shortened form of perquisite, a word English took from the Latin perquisitum, meaning 'something gained' or 'profit'. That Latin form was built from per, meaning 'thoroughly', and quaerere, meaning 'to seek' or 'to obtain', so a perquisite was literally something thoroughly sought out and acquired. The clipped, casual perk became common in the 1800s as office and trade slang. The other sense, the verb meaning to become lively or to lift up briskly (as in to perk up), is much older and rather murkier; it appears in late Middle English, possibly connected to an Old French and dialectal root for perching or holding oneself jauntily, but its exact ancestry is genuinely uncertain. Because the modern spelling is short and phonetic, the real trap is simply remembering it is one tidy syllable, not the longer perquisite it sprang from.

How the word is built

• perk; the benefit sense is a clipped form of perquisite (per- 'thoroughly'
• quaerere 'to seek')