Word.ws English Dictionary

hunch

/hʌnt͡ʃ/

hunch noun: a hump; a protuberance.

Noun

hunch (plural hunches)

  1. A hump; a protuberance.
  2. A stooped or curled posture; a slouch.
    • The old man walked with a hunch.
  3. A theory, idea, or guess; an intuitive impression that something will happen.
    • I have a hunch they'll find a way to solve the problem.
    • I've learned to trust my hunches.
    Synonyms:
    inkling, hint, clue
  4. A hunk; a lump; a thick piece.
    • a hunch of bread
    • "The greedy little bastards! They had a 'unch of bread each when I 'ad my dinner."1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019
  5. A push or thrust, as with the elbow.

Verb

hunch (third-person singular simple present hunches, present participle hunching, simple past and past participle hunched)

  1. (intransitive) To bend the top of one's body forward while raising one's shoulders.
    • Don't hunch over your computer if you want to avoid neck problems.
    • Sandy, you will never get anywhere by hunching over your putter, hold your shoulders back and bend from the waist.1961, Muriel Spark, chapter 5, in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, New York: HarperPerenniel, published 1994, page 156
    Synonyms:
    slouch, stoop, lean
  2. (transitive) To raise (one's shoulders) (while lowering one's head or bending the top of one's body forward); to curve (one's body) forward (sometimes followed by up).
    • They stood outside the door hunching themselves against the rain and puffing on their cigarettes.
    • He hunched up his shoulders and stared down at the ground.
  3. (intransitive) To walk (somewhere) while hunching one's shoulders.
    • […] the figure hunched up the road.1955, J. P. Donleavy, chapter 2, in The Ginger Man, New York: Dell, page 9
    • […] once we had hunched in out of the sun and slunk through a cold pork-and-beans-on-bread lunch […] my brother and I found a desert creek nearby and heaved rocks at each other to cool off.1969, Ray Bradbury, “The Inspired Chicken Motel”, in I Sing the Body Electric, New York: Knopf, page 57
    Synonyms:
    slouch
  4. (transitive) To thrust a hump or protuberance out of (something); to crook, as the back.
    • […] thou art all one errour; soul and body.
      The first young tryal of some unskill’d Pow’r;
      Rude in the making Art, and Ape of Jove.
      Thy crooked mind within hunch’d out thy back;
      And wander’d in thy limbs:1679, John Dryden, Nathaniel Lee, Oedipus, London: R. Bentley and M. Magnes, act I, page 6
  5. (transitive) To push or jostle with the elbow; to push or thrust against (someone).
    • After this, we saw a great Troop of Women upon the High-way to Hell, with their Bags; and their fellows, at their Heels, ever, and anon, hunching, and Justling one Another.1667, “The Sixth Vision of Hell”, in Roger L’Estrange, transl., The Visions of Dom Francisco de Quevedo Villegas, London: H. Herringman, pages 182–183
    • Hickman, a great over-grown, lank-hair’d, chubby boy, who would be hunch’d and punch’d by every-body; and go home, with his finger in his eye, and tell his mother.1748, Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, London, Volume 2, Letter 1, p. 8
    Synonyms:
    elbow, nudge
  6. (colloquial, intransitive) To have a hunch, or make an intuitive guess.
    • People who are instinctive hunchers go through some such process at every decision-making point of their lives. It is likely that children often make decisions and discern truths by hunching.2010, Max Gunther, The Luck Factor

hunch meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

hunch in Tamil

கூன், தடித்த திரளை, முன்னுணர்வு

hunch in Urdu

گمڑا, اشارہ, کوہان

hunch in Bengali

কুঁজ

hunch in Malayalam

hunch, hunch-back
ഗഡു gaḍu
More languagesFewer languages
hunch in Kannada
ಮುನ್ನೆಣಿಕೆ, ಗೂನುಬೀಳು, ಬೆನ್ನು ಬಾಗಿಸು
hunch in Tagalog
kutob

Examples of hunch in a sentence

  • She rolled over and hunched into a fetal position.1978, Armistead Maupin, “… and many happy returns”, in Tales of the City, New York: Ballantine Books, page 76:
  • Danc[ing] Mast[er]. […] not too fast […] keep you[r] leg[s] straight, […] don’t hunch up your shoulders so;1672, Edward Ravenscroft, The Citizen Turn’d Gentleman, London: Thomas Dring, act I, scene 1, page 4:
  • If you hunch your shoulders too long against a storm your shoulders will grow bowed....1924, Ford Madox Ford, Some Do Not ..., New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Part 2, Chapter 2:
  • They sat looking out at the dark, at the square of light the kitchen lantern threw on the ground outside the door, with a hunched shadow of Grampa in the middle of it.1939, John Steinbeck, chapter 10, in The Grapes of Wrath, New York: Viking, published 1958, page 142:

All 40 example sentences with hunch

Synonyms of hunch

All synonyms of hunch

Forms of hunch

Noun
pluralhunches
Verb
third-person singular presenthunches
present participlehunching
past participlehunched
pasthunched

Past tense of hunch: hunched

Plural of hunch: hunches

Origin of hunch

Assibilated variant of hunk, of uncertain origin. Alternatively, a derivative of hump, via an earlier Middle English *hunche, *humpchin, from *hump + -chin, -chen (diminutive suffix), equivalent to hump + -kin. In the sense of an intuitive impression, said to be from the old gambling superstition that it brings luck to touch the hump of a hunchback.

Words formed from hunch

Words that rhyme with hunch

Questions about hunch

What does hunch mean?
Hunch means a hump; a protuberance.
What is hunch in Tamil?
Hunch in Tamil is கூன், தடித்த திரளை, முன்னுணர்வு. See Hunch meaning in Tamil.
How do you use hunch in a sentence?
She rolled over and hunched into a fetal position.
What part of speech is hunch?
Hunch can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce hunch?
Hunch is pronounced /hʌnt͡ʃ/.
What is the plural of hunch?
The plural of hunch is hunches.

Words near hunch in the dictionary

  1. Hunan
  2. Hunan hand syndrome
  3. Hunanese
  4. hunbot
  5. hunbots
  6. hunch
  7. hunch cuddy hunch
  8. hunch over
  9. Hunchakist
  10. Hunchakists
  11. hunchback

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hunch (page history and authors); hunch (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hunch (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hunch (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ഗഡു (Malayalam) (page history and authors); hunch (Kannada 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: en-us-hunch.ogg.

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