Hunker

//ˈhʌŋkə// name, noun, verb

name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A political conservative. dated
Verb
  1. 1
    To crouch or squat close to the ground or lie down intransitive
  2. 2
    sit on one's heels wordnet
  3. 3
    To apply oneself to a task intransitive
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname

Synonyms

All synonyms
crouchsquatcrouchhughunker downlie

Example

More examples

"I'm ready to hunker down for the evening."

Etymology

Etymology 1

Originally Scottish. Origin uncertain, but probably of Germanic origin, perhaps *hunk- a nasalised variant of *huk- (compare Scots hoonk, hounk, variants of huk, hok (“to squat, crouch”); Scots hocker (“to crouch down, hunker”)), all of North Germanic origin, from Old Norse huka (“to crouch”), from Proto-Germanic *hūkan- (“to squat”), from *hūkkan-, back-formed from the iterative *huk(k)ōn-, from Proto-Indo-European *kuk-néh₂, from *kewk- (“to curve, bend”) (also the source of high). Probable cognates include Old Norse húka, Dutch huiken, and German hocken.

Etymology 2

Unknown

Related phrases

hunker down

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