Word.ws English Dictionary

hork

/ˈhɔː(ɹ)k/

hork verb: to foul up; to be occupied with difficulty, tangle, or unpleasantness; to be broken.

Verb

hork (third-person singular simple present horks, present participle horking, simple past and past participle horked)

  1. (slang) To foul up; to be occupied with difficulty, tangle, or unpleasantness; to be broken.
    • I downloaded the program, but something is horked and it won't load.
    Synonyms:
    bork
  2. (regional, slang) To steal, especially petty theft or misnomer in jest.
    • Can I hork that code from you for my project?
  3. (slang) To vomit, cough up.
    Synonyms:
    hawk, hock
  4. (slang) To gulp
    • Don't just hork it down!
  5. (slang) To throw.
    • Let's go hork pickles at people from the back row of the movie theatre.
  6. (slang) To eat hastily or greedily; to gobble.
    • I don't know what got into her, but she horked all those hoagies last night!
    Synonyms:
    gobble, scarf, scoff
  7. (slang, transitive) To move.
    • Go hork the kegs from out back.

Synonyms of hork

Forms of hork

third-person singular presenthorks
present participlehorking
past participlehorked
pasthorked
alternative formhoark

Origin of hork

Onomatopoeia or imitative. For “cough up” sense, compare hawk/hock (16th century), which are almost homophonous in non-rhotic accents. For “throw” sense, compare huck. The “foul up” sense is presumably influenced by bork (late 1990s), from broken. The “steal” sense may be related to hook, which has the same slang meaning.

Words that rhyme with hork

10 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about hork

What does hork mean?
Hork means to foul up; to be occupied with difficulty, tangle, or unpleasantness; to be broken.
What part of speech is hork?
Hork is a verb.
How do you pronounce hork?
Hork is pronounced /ˈhɔː(ɹ)k/.
What is the past tense of hork?
The past tense of hork is horked.

Words near hork in the dictionary

  1. horizontic
  2. horizontical
  3. horizontically
  4. horizonward
  5. horizonwards
  6. hork
  7. horked
  8. horkey
  9. horkeys
  10. Horkheimerian
  11. Horki

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hork (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-au-hork.ogg.

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