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Thunk

//θʌŋk// intj, noun, verb

Definitions

Intj
  1. 1
    Representing the dull sound of the impact of a heavy object striking another and coming to an immediate standstill, with neither object being broken by the impact.
Noun
  1. 1
    A delayed computation.

    "Not surprisingly, a thunk is more expensive to store than a single number[…]."

  2. 2
    a dull hollow sound wordnet
  3. 3
    In the Scheme programming language, a function or procedure taking no arguments.
  4. 4
    A specialized subroutine that one software module uses to execute code in another module.

    "If the provider of these DLLs has not updated the code to a 32-bit environment, you will have to switch to a new 32-bit library or write thunks between your 32-bit code and the 16-bit DLL."

Verb
  1. 1
    past participle of think form-of, humorous, nonstandard, participle, past

    "Who would have thunk those guys would have a problem with a little lie?"

  2. 2
    To strike against something, without breakage, making a "thunk" sound.

    "I was thunked on the head by his stick."

  3. 3
    To delay (a computation). transitive

    "Not surprisingly, a thunk is more expensive to store than a single number, and the more complex the thunked expression, the more space it needs. For something cheap such as arithmetic, thunking an expression is more computationally expensive than calculating it immediately."

  4. 4
    To execute (code) by means of a thunk. transitive

    "This efficiency is offset by the fact that some of the calls made by Win32 apps must now be thunked down to 16 bits, something that isn't necessary in Windows NT and OS/2."

Etymology

Etymology 1

By analogy with past tenses and past participles ending in "-unk", such as drunk and sunk.

Etymology 2

Onomatopoeic.

Etymology 3

Onomatopoeic.

Etymology 4

Said by the inventors to be from the irregular jocular past tense of think (see Etymology 1), being coined when they realised that the type of an argument in ALGOL 60 could be predetermined at compile time (with a little compile-time “thought”).

Etymology 5

Said by the inventors to be from the irregular jocular past tense of think (see Etymology 1), being coined when they realised that the type of an argument in ALGOL 60 could be predetermined at compile time (with a little compile-time “thought”).

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