Prank
nounA mischievous trick played on someone for amusement.
How to spell prank
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce prank
What does prank mean?
- nounA mischievous trick played on someone for amusement.
- verbTo play a mischievous trick on someone.
Prank in a sentence
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noun
The office prank left everyone laughing for the rest of the morning.
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verb
The teenagers like to prank their neighbours every Halloween.
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noun
His idea of a harmless prank was to swap the labels on every jar in the kitchen.
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verb
She promised never to prank her coworkers during a busy shift again.
Where does prank come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
The exact origin of 'prank' is uncertain, which is why its history reads more like a guess than a clean lineage. It appears in English in the early 1500s, first as a verb meaning 'to dress up showily' or 'to deck out', and only slightly later as a noun for a mischievous trick or playful act. Scholars suspect a connection to older Germanic words such as the Dutch 'pronken' and the German 'prunken', both meaning 'to show off' or 'to make a display', which would tie the early 'dress up' sense neatly to the idea of putting on a performance. Over time the sense narrowed to the playful trickery we mean today, where a 'prank' is a piece of staged mischief rather than fine clothing. Because the trail is so faint, the safest verdict is that the word is of obscure origin with probable Germanic links. The spelling is mercifully phonetic, so the only real care needed is the single 'a' and the closing 'k'.
How the word is built
- prank (single root; no prefix or suffix)
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