awk
/ɔːk/US/ɔːk/
awk adjective: odd; out of order; perverse. Also the alternative letter-case form of AWK.
Adjective
awk (comparative more awk, superlative most awk)
- Odd; out of order; perverse.
- Wrong, or not commonly used; clumsy; sinister.
- the awk end of hir charmed rod1567, Arthur Golding, Metamorphoses
- Clumsy in performance or manners; not dexterous; awkward.
- […] 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 […]1815 Sir Egerton Brydges, Archaica: Harvey's Four letters, and sonnets, touching Robert Greene; Pierce's supererogation; [and] New letter of notable contents. Brathwaite's Essays upon the five...
- Synonyms:
- unhandy
- Awkward; uncomfortable.
Adverb
awk (comparative more awk, superlative most awk)
- Perversely; in the wrong way.
- Ill huſbandry drowſeth at fortune ſo awke, / good huſbandry rowſeth him ſelfe like a hawke.1570, Thomas Tusser, “Comparing Good Husband with Vnthrift His Brother, the Better Descerneth the Tone from the Tother”, in A Hundrethe Good Pointes of Husbandrie, Lately Maried vnto a Hundrethe Good...
Proper noun (1) capitalized: AWK
AWK
- 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.
- An in-depth knowledge of SHELL operations, SED, AWK, as well as the “C” language is required.1982 March 14, Rockwell International, “Software Support Specialist”, in Chicago Tribune, final edition, 135th year, number 73, Chicago, Ill., →ISSN, →OCLC, section 15, page 10, column 4
Proper noun (2) capitalized: Awk
Awk
- Alternative letter-case form of AWK.
- Growing company needs an experienced part-time computer person familiar in Unix, Awk Programming and Script Programming.1992 May 1, Ed Matthews, “Computer Person”, in Lancaster New Era, 116th year, number 36,035, Lancaster, Pa., →OCLC, classified section, page 9, column 2
- Shell and Awk scripts are highly desirable.1995 April 1, CHU Computer Systems Manager, “Computer—DOS LAN, and UNIX Support”, in The Sydney Morning Herald, number 49,166, Sydney, N.S.W., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 52A, column 2
Also used as
awk is also the alternative letter-case form of AWK.
awk is also the alternative spelling of och.
Synonyms of awk
Forms of awk
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more awk |
| superlative | most awk |
| Adverb | |
| comparative | more awk |
| superlative | most awk |
| Proper noun | |
| alternative form | Awk |
| alternative form | awk |
Origin of awk
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”).
From the initial letters of the surnames of its authors: Alfred Aho, Peter J. Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan.
Words formed from awk
Words that rhyme with awk
Questions about awk
- What does awk mean?
- Awk means odd; out of order; perverse.
- What part of speech is awk?
- Awk can be an adjective, an adverb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce awk?
- Awk is pronounced /ɔːk/ (UK).
Words near awk in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: awk (page history and authors); AWK (page history and authors); Awk (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-awk.wav.
Cite this entry: “awk.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/awk. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.