Word.ws English Dictionary

gunk

/ɡʌŋk/

gunk noun: grime, dirt, slime; any vague, messy, or unknown substance.

Noun

gunk (countable and uncountable, plural gunks)

  1. (informal, uncountable) Grime, dirt, slime; any vague, messy, or unknown substance.
    • I washed all the gunk off the light fixture, and found that it was white, not brown.
    • Don't get gunk on me. I took a bath last Saturday and I'm all clean.1989 May 18, Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes (comic)
    Synonyms:
    goo, goop, grime, gunge, muck
  2. (uncountable) A subculture of 21st century American males, combining elements of modern gothic culture with punk rock.
  3. An entity with no atomic parts; infinitely divisible.
  4. (countable) A member of the gunk subculture.

Verb

gunk (third-person singular simple present gunks, present participle gunking, simple past and past participle gunked)

  1. To soil or make dirty.
    Synonyms:
    befoul, muck, slur, assoil, beclart, bedaub, bedirty, imbrue (especially with blood), bedizen, befile

Examples of gunk in a sentence

  • The drains were filled with gunk and no water could flow off.
  • The sandpaper strips off the old green paint, but it gunks up quickly.
  • I woke up this morning with so much eye gunk on my face.

All 16 example sentences with gunk

Synonyms of gunk

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of gunk

Forms of gunk

Noun
pluralgunks
Verb
third-person singular presentgunks
present participlegunking
past participlegunked
pastgunked

Origin of gunk

Apparently from Gunk, trademark name for a liquid soap; perhaps taken as a blend of grime + funk.

Words formed from gunk

Words that rhyme with gunk

17 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about gunk

What does gunk mean?
Gunk means grime, dirt, slime; any vague, messy, or unknown substance.
What part of speech is gunk?
Gunk can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce gunk?
Gunk is pronounced /ɡʌŋk/.
What is the plural of gunk?
The plural of gunk is gunks.

Words near gunk in the dictionary

  1. Gunjala
  2. Gunjan
  3. gunjible
  4. gunjibles
  5. gunjie
  6. gunk
  7. gunk up
  8. gunk-hole
  9. gunk-holed
  10. gunk-holes
  11. gunk-holing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gunk (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: en-us-gunk.ogg.

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