Shonky
adj, noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A dishonest person. Australia, informal
"It is clear from Mr Boyd's evidence that the Union is hoping as a result of its application to obtain an award provision which would control the practices of the "crooks and shonkies in the industry"."
- 1 Of poor or dubious quality, shoddy, unreliable; deviously dishonest, fraudulent. Australia, New-Zealand, UK, informal
"1986, Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand, ANZJS: The Australian & New Zealand Journal of Sociology, Volume 22, page 475, The argument gets even shonkier when they claim that the boundary between clerical and administrative work is difficult to define anyway, and that routinisation and fragmentation have affected lower and middle management too (pp. 95–6)."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"1986, Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand, ANZJS: The Australian & New Zealand Journal of Sociology, Volume 22, page 475, The argument gets even shonkier when they claim that the boundary between clerical and administrative work is difficult to define anyway, and that routinisation and fragmentation have affected lower and middle management too (pp. 95–6)."
Etymology
From 1970s; possibly from dialectal English shonk (“smart”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.