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Awk

//ɔːk// adj, adv, name, slang

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Odd; out of order; perverse. obsolete
  2. 2
    Wrong, or not commonly used; clumsy; sinister. obsolete

    "the awk end of hir charmed rod"

  3. 3
    Clumsy in performance or manners; not dexterous; awkward. UK, dialectal, obsolete

    "[…] whose wild and madbrain humour nothing fitteth so just, as the stalest dudgen or absurdest balductum, that they or their mates can invent in odd and awk speeches […]"

  4. 4
    Awkward; uncomfortable. US, slang
Adverb
  1. 1
    Perversely; in the wrong way. obsolete

    "Ill huſbandry drowſeth at fortune ſo awke, / good huſbandry rowſeth him ſelfe like a hawke."

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    Alternative letter-case form of AWK. alt-of

    "One thing awk is good for is picking out and possibly rearranging columns within command output."

  2. 2
    A Unix scripting language for text processing, or the command line interface itself.

    "I used C, Perl, the Bourne shell, and some AWK and Tcl to implement these projects."

  3. 3
    Alternative letter-case form of AWK. alt-of

    "Growing company needs an experienced part-time computer person familiar in Unix, Awk Programming and Script Programming."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English awke, from Old Norse ǫfugr, ǫfigr, afigr (“turned backwards”) (whence Danish avet (“backwards”), Swedish avig (“turned backwards”)), from Proto-Germanic *abuhaz. Cognate with German äbich, Gothic 𐌹𐌱𐌿𐌺𐍃 (ibuks, “turned back”). Akin to Sanskrit अपाच् (apāc, “turned away”). Compare dialectal Danish ave (“to turn”), Dutch averechts (“opposite, backwards, contrary”), Icelandic öfga (“to reverse”).

Etymology 2

From Middle English awke, from Old Norse ǫfugr, ǫfigr, afigr (“turned backwards”) (whence Danish avet (“backwards”), Swedish avig (“turned backwards”)), from Proto-Germanic *abuhaz. Cognate with German äbich, Gothic 𐌹𐌱𐌿𐌺𐍃 (ibuks, “turned back”). Akin to Sanskrit अपाच् (apāc, “turned away”). Compare dialectal Danish ave (“to turn”), Dutch averechts (“opposite, backwards, contrary”), Icelandic öfga (“to reverse”).

Etymology 3

From the initial letters of the surnames of its authors: Alfred Aho, Peter J. Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan.

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