Word.ws English Dictionary

honcho

Syllables: hon·cho/ˈhɒn.tʃəʊ/US/ˈhɑn.t͡ʃoʊ/

honcho noun: boss, leader.

Noun

honcho (plural honchos or honchoes)

  1. (informal) Boss, leader.
    • Says they had no choice. Says the NVA killed the old honcho when he said no. Now he says all the rice is theirs.1986, Oliver Stone, Platoon (motion picture), spoken by Private Gator Lerner (Johnny Depp)
    • For years, snobbery has been a hallmark of this city of wealth and glamour, movie stars and entertainment honchos, where it is possible to spend $20,000 for a watch, $6,000 for a suit with 14-karat gold pinstriping or $15,000 for a handbag of rare leather.1992 October 26, Calvin Sims, “Hard Times, Even on Rodeo Drive”, in The New York Times (Business Day section), New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on...

Verb

honcho (third-person singular simple present honchos, present participle honchoing, simple past and past participle honchoed)

  1. (Canada, US, informal, transitive) To lead or manage.
    • I had never honchoed that many people so even something as simple as ordering them to knead dough or fondant became an important decision.2010, Buddy Valastro, Cake Boss, Simon and Schuster, published 2020, →ISBN, page 142
    • The task of choosing the clips that comprised the allotted 10 minutes in the bake-off was left to the supervising sound editor, as it was he or she who honchoed the preparation of the soundtrack for the rerecording mixing stage in the first place.2012, David Lewis Yewdall, Practical Art of Motion Picture Sound, Taylor & Francis, →ISBN

honcho meaning in Tamil

honcho in Tamil

தலைவன், பொறுப்பாளர், மேலாளர்

Examples of honcho in a sentence

  • Mostly he wrote what the higher honchos in the newsroom referred to, often condescendingly, as “offbeat” stories.1999, Dave Barry, Big Trouble, Penguin, published 2010, →ISBN, page 13:
  • Gulfstream makes jets for both Hollywood honchos and foreign governments like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.2001, Michael Moore, Stupid White Men, page 22:

Forms of honcho

Noun
pluralhonchos
pluralhonchoes
Verb
third-person singular presenthonchos
present participlehonchoing
past participlehonchoed
pasthonchoed

Origin of honcho

From Japanese 班(はん)長(ちょう) (hanchō, “squad leader”), from 19th c. Mandarin 班長 /班长 (bānzhǎng, “team leader”). Probably entered English during World War II: many apocryphal stories describe American soldiers hearing Japanese prisoners-of-war refer to their lieutenants as hanchō.

Words formed from honcho

Words that rhyme with honcho

Questions about honcho

What does honcho mean?
Honcho means boss, leader.
What is honcho in Tamil?
Honcho in Tamil is தலைவன், பொறுப்பாளர், மேலாளர். See Honcho meaning in Tamil.
How do you use honcho in a sentence?
Mostly he wrote what the higher honchos in the newsroom referred to, often condescendingly, as “offbeat” stories.
What part of speech is honcho?
Honcho can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce honcho?
Honcho is pronounced /ˈhɑn.t͡ʃoʊ/ (US).
What is the plural of honcho?
The plural of honcho is honchos.

Words near honcho in the dictionary

  1. Honavar
  2. honbasho
  3. honbeast
  4. honble
  5. Honchar
  6. honcho
  7. honchoed
  8. honchoes
  9. honchoing
  10. honchos
  11. Honcut

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: honcho (page history and authors); honcho (Tamil Wiktionary) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-honcho.wav.

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