Word.ws English Dictionary

hunky

UK/ˈhʌŋ.ki/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/ˈhɐŋ.ki/

hunky adjective: exhibiting strong, masculine beauty.

Adjective

hunky (comparative hunkier, superlative hunkiest)

  1. (informal) Exhibiting strong, masculine beauty.
  2. Shaped like a hunk, or piece; chunky.
  3. (US, slang) All right; in good condition.
  4. (US, slang) even; square; on equal footing with.
    • […] he dropped like a brick into the firing line and began to shoot; began to get "hunky" with all those people who had been plugging at him.1900, Stephen Crane, Wounds in the Rain

Noun (1)

hunky (plural hunkies)

  1. (US, ethnic, slang, slur, uncommon) A Hungarian or other eastern European, e.g. a Romanian or a Slav. (Sometimes applied (like honky) to any white person.)
    • "All hunkies and wops, and no wonder there was seven hundred and fifty of them."1924, Jack Bethea, Bed Rock, page 175
    • He made hunkies and cut ice-cream sandwiches.1940, Unemployment Compensation Interpretation Service: Benefit series, page 183

Noun (2) capitalized: Hunky

Hunky (plural Hunkies)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of hunky (“Hungarian, eastern European”).

Forms of hunky

Adjective
comparativehunkier
superlativehunkiest
Noun
pluralhunkies
alternative formhunkie
alternative formhunkey
pluralHunkies

Origin of hunky

From hunk + -y.

From the older *hunk, probably alteration of Hungarian + -ie/-y. Compare bohunk and honky / honkey.

Words formed from hunky

Phrases with hunky

Words that rhyme with hunky

5 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about hunky

What does hunky mean?
Hunky means exhibiting strong, masculine beauty.
What part of speech is hunky?
Hunky can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce hunky?
Hunky is pronounced /ˈhʌŋ.ki/ (UK).

Words near hunky in the dictionary

  1. hunks
  2. hunks of junk
  3. hunkses
  4. hunksome
  5. hunkvertising
  6. hunky
  7. hunky dory
  8. hunky hand grenade
  9. hunky punk
  10. hunky punks
  11. hunky-dorey

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hunky (page history and authors); Hunky (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-au-hunky.ogg.

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