Word.ws English Dictionary

cank

/kæŋk/

cank noun: gossip, chatter.

Noun

cank (countable and uncountable, plural canks)

  1. (UK, dialectal) Gossip, chatter.
  2. (UK, dialectal) A chat.
  3. (UK, dialectal) A gossip, tell-tale.
  4. (UK, dialectal) The cry of a goose.
  5. (UK, dialectal) A fit of ill-humour.

Verb

cank (third-person singular simple present canks, present participle canking, simple past and past participle canked)

  1. (UK, dialectal) To gossip, prate, chatter.
    • He said that what he had told me wasn't meant to be repeated again, and I ought not to have gone canking it about, especially to the Rymers theirselves^([sic]); […]1880, Ellen Wood, Johnny Ludlow, volume 1, page 67
  2. (UK, dialectal) To talk rapidly; gabble.
  3. (UK, dialectal) To cackle, as geese.

Forms of cank

Noun
pluralcanks
Verb
third-person singular presentcanks
present participlecanking
past participlecanked
pastcanked

Origin of cank

From Middle English *cank (compare Middle English cang (“foolish"; also "fool”, adj and noun) > obsolete English cank (“dumb, stupid”)), from Old English canc, ġecanc (“scorn, jeering”), from Proto-West Germanic *kank, from Proto-Germanic *kanką (“laughter”), from Proto-Indo-European *geng-, *genǵ- (“to mock, insult”).

Questions about cank

What does cank mean?
Cank means gossip, chatter.
What part of speech is cank?
Cank can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce cank?
Cank is pronounced /kæŋk/.
What is the plural of cank?
The plural of cank is canks.

Words near cank in the dictionary

  1. Canizalezes
  2. canjar
  3. canjars
  4. Canjaway
  5. Canjulao
  6. cank
  7. canked
  8. canker
  9. canker flies
  10. canker fly
  11. canker rash

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cank (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.

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Cite this entry: “cank.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cank. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.