Word.ws English Dictionary

hulking

/ˈhʌlkɪŋ/

hulking adjective: large and bulky, heavily built; massive. Also the present participle and gerund of hulk.

Adjective

hulking (not comparable)

  1. Large and bulky, heavily built; massive.
    • A hulking shape burst through the doorway and hurtled down the corridor, leaving a maelstrom of air currents in his wake.2001, Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl, page 212
  2. Unwieldy.

Noun

hulking (plural hulkings)

  1. A kind of sloping embankment used as a coastal defence.
    • The sand-hills have permanently disappeared from many parts of the coast and have been replaced by clay embankments, timber hulkings, and, during the pre-war years, by mass-concrete stepwork.1953, The Institution of Civil Engineers, Proceedings (volume 2, part 2, page 513)

Also used as

hulking is also the present participle and gerund of hulk.

Examples of hulking in a sentence

  • Gary was a hulking meathead who, when he wasn't playing football, was either hunting, fishing or getting drunk and rowdy in some topless bar.
  • One of them was a hulking brute of a man, heavily tattooed and with a hardened face that practically screamed "I just got out of jail."
  • The hulking cream-and-gray flagstones underfoot had been worn away from centuries of service.

All 19 example sentences with hulking

Forms of hulking

pluralhulkings

Origin of hulking

From hulk + -ing.

Words formed from hulking

Phrases with hulking

Questions about hulking

What does hulking mean?
Hulking means large and bulky, heavily built; massive.
What part of speech is hulking?
Hulking can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce hulking?
Hulking is pronounced /ˈhʌlkɪŋ/.

Words near hulking in the dictionary

  1. hulked off
  2. hulked out
  3. hulkes
  4. hulkier
  5. hulkiest
  6. hulking
  7. hulking off
  8. hulking out
  9. hulkingly
  10. hulkings
  11. hulkish

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hulking (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-hulking.wav.

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