Hork

//ˈhɔː(ɹ)k// verb, slang

verb, slang ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To foul up; to be occupied with difficulty, tangle, or unpleasantness; to be broken. slang

    "I downloaded the program, but something is horked and it won't load."

  2. 2
    To steal, especially petty theft or misnomer in jest. regional, slang

    "Can I hork that code from you for my project?"

  3. 3
    To vomit, cough up. slang
  4. 4
    To gulp slang
  5. 5
    To gulp Don't just hork it down!; Don't just hork it down! slang
Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    To throw. slang

    "Let's go hork pickles at people from the back row of the movie theatre."

  2. 7
    To eat hastily or greedily; to gobble. slang

    "I don't know what got into her, but she horked all those hoagies last night!"

  3. 8
    To move. slang, transitive

    "Go hork the kegs from out back."

Example

More examples

"I downloaded the program, but something is horked and it won't load."

Etymology

Onomatopoeia or imitative. For “cough up” sense, compare hawk/hock (16th century), which are almost homophonous in non-rhotic accents. For “throw” sense, compare huck. The “foul up” sense is presumably influenced by bork (late 1990s), from broken. The “steal” sense may be related to hook, which has the same slang meaning.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.