dunk
/dʌŋk/
dunk verb: to submerge briefly in a liquid.
Verb
dunk (third-person singular simple present dunks, present participle dunking, simple past and past participle dunked)
- To submerge briefly in a liquid.
- I like to dunk my donut in my apple cider.
- To set down carelessly.
- Parents shouldn't just dunk their kids in front of the TV.
- To put the ball directly downward through the hoop while grabbing onto the rim with power.
- The center spun quickly and dunked the ball with authority.
- To put down on social media [with on].
Noun
dunk (plural dunks)
- The act or instance of dunking, particularly in basketball.
- The point guard threaded a pass with pinpoint precision to the power forward for an easy dunk.
- She gave the biscuit a dunk in her cup of milk.
Proper noun capitalized: Dunk
Dunk (countable and uncountable, plural Dunks)
- A surname.
- A locality in Cassowary Coast Region, Queensland, Australia, which includes the Family Islands; one is Dunk Island, named after George Montagu-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax.
dunk meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Urdu and Kannada
dunk in Tamil
- திரவத்தில் மூழ்கவை
dunk in Marathi
- डंक
dunk in Urdu
- بھگو کر کھانا
dunk in Kannada
- ಅದ್ದು
More languagesFewer languages
- dunk in Punjabi
- ਡੰਕ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ
- dunk in Arabic
- رَمْيَة سَاحِقَة
- dunk in Malay
- celup
Examples of dunk in a sentence
- With that dunk, he burned the defender and the coach's whole strategy.
- As long as you get the vice president's approval first, it'll be a slam dunk.
- Meeting the numbers will be a layup, if not a slam dunk.
Forms of dunk
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | dunks |
| present participle | dunking |
| past participle | dunked |
| past | dunked |
| Noun | |
| plural | dunks |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Dunks |
Origin of dunk
From Pennsylvania German dunke, from Middle High German dunken, from Old High German dunkōn (“to dip, submerge, dunk”), from Proto-West Germanic *þunkōn (“to make wet”), possibly from Proto-Germanic *þunkōną, from Proto-Indo-European *teng- (“to moisten, wet”). Cognate with German tunken (“to dunk”), Latin tingō (“to wet, moisten”), Ancient Greek τέγγω (téngō, “to wet, moisten”). Related to taint, tincture, tint.
Words formed from dunk
Phrases with dunk
Words that rhyme with dunk
Questions about dunk
- What does dunk mean?
- Dunk means to submerge briefly in a liquid.
- What is dunk in Tamil?
- Dunk in Tamil is திரவத்தில் மூழ்கவை. See Dunk meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is dunk?
- Dunk can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce dunk?
- Dunk is pronounced /dʌŋk/.
- What is the past tense of dunk?
- The past tense of dunk is dunked.
Words near dunk in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dunk (page history and authors); Dunk (page history and authors); dunk (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dunk (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dunk (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dunk (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dunk (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dunk.wav.
Cite this entry: “dunk.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dunk. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.