Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use hunch in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Hunch means a hump; a protuberance. Example: “The old man walked with a hunch.”

Examples of hunch by meaning

nounA stooped or curled posture; a slouch.

  • The old man walked with a hunch.

nounA 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.

nounA hunk; a lump; a thick piece.

  • a hunch of bread

verbTo 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
  • 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

verbTo raise (one's shoulders) (while lowering one's head or bending the top of one's body forward); to curve (one's body)...

  • 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.
  • 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

verbTo push or jostle with the elbow; to push or thrust against (someone).

  • She hunched me and winked.1974, Maya Angelou, chapter 12, in Gather Together in My Name, New York: Bantam, published 1975, page 40

verbTo have a hunch, or make an intuitive guess.

  • It is likely that children often make decisions and discern truths by hunching.2010, Max Gunther, The Luck Factor

More sentences with hunch

  • Marsh whistled low as he rubbed a hand over his husband's hunched shoulders.2023, Layla Reyne, King Hunt: A Perfect Play Novel (Perfect Play), Layla Reyne, →ISBN. From the entry bold move, Cotton
  • He walked with a hunched posture and had reedy upper arms.2022, Devon Price, chapter 5, in Michele Eniclerico, editor, Unmasking Autism, New York: Harmony Books, →ISBN, page 142. From the entry reedy
  • Hrothguys are a little too hunched for my taste, but I still love that we have them.2022 February 22, Jovial_Sorrow, Reddit. From the entry Hrothguy
  • I get a hunch that PC Charles seems ever so slightly jealous.2015, Catrin Dafydd, “Cool Dude”, in Random Births and Love Hearts, Llandysul, Ceredigion: Gomer Press, →ISBN, page 105. From the entry cwtsh
  • "Oh, yesss," he muttered in a mousy Germanic accent, hunching over and twiddling his fingers anxiously.2009 January 8, Ben Sisario, “Addicted to Peter Lorre (That Voice, Those Eyes)”, in New York Times. From the entry yesss
  • I wasn't sure, but I had a hunch all I needed was a mulligan.2008, Ross Dale, Embedded, Sourcebooks, →ISBN, page 202. From the entry mulligan
  • With his banana nose, hunched shoulders and hustling ways, Matthau's Buttermaker had an unmistakably Nixonian cast.2005 July 22, Manohla Dargis, “Film Review: The Kids Are All Right; the Coach Has Problems”, in New York Times, retrieved 10 Feb 2018. From the entry banana nose
  • My hunch is that the public is being spoiled through being overentertained.1954, Bob Hope, Pete Martin, Have Tux, Will Travel. From the entry overentertained
  • However, I have a hunch this whole arrangement is on a friendly basis.1953 June 1, Louella O[ettinger] Parsons, “Farley Granger Wins His Release—at Last: But Sam Goldwyn Retains an Option to Sign Star again…. From the entry nothingburger
  • He flung himself into a chair and hunched his shoulders and looked at it.1919, Jennette Lee, chapter XVI, in The Rain-Coat Girl, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, published 1922, page 101. From the entry rumptious
  • I tell you-all boys, when you-all got a hunch, play it for all it's worth.1910 October, Jack London, Burning Daylight, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC. From the entry play it for all it's worth
  • Outside the church, across the square, a woman stood hunched.2023, Isabella Hammad, Enter Ghost, Jonathan Cape, page 65. From the entry thawb
  • Just look at the way her shoulders are hunched.2018 July 20, Lisa O'Carroll, “Ireland open to new proposal on Brexit border”, in The Guardian. From the entry bionic
  • Hours later, Private Chapman awoke to find himself with 10 other captives, hunched on the dirt floor of a farmhouse.2018 November 11, Hampton Sides, “Remembering the Forgotten War”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 12…. From the entry Kanggye
  • Mice with lethal bordetellosis indicated by ruffled fur, hunched stature, and limited responsiveness were euthanized to prevent unnecessary suffering.2015 October 21, “Type Six Secretion System of Bordetella bronchiseptica and Adaptive Immune Components Limit Intracellular Survival…. From the entry bordetellosis
  • A whippet's bow to his back in the tight hunch where he sat, narrow-gutted from recent deprivations, a long Riverina face.2015, Gregory Day, Archipelago of Souls. From the entry narrow-gutted
  • I am not a scientist, it's just a hunch.2011 March 14, Paul Dale Roberts, Shannon McCabe, “The Devils Triangle and That Mysterious Fog 241246”, in H.P.I. Chronicles, volume 1…. From the entry timeslip
  • His personnel file, an inch thick with commendations, recounts hunches he played, good-cop bad-cop routines, shoot-outs with Glocks and Berettas.2010, Ken Armstrong, Nick Perry, Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime, and Complicity, U of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page 12. From the entry good-cop bad-cop
  • He cultivated it on its own special plot, and checked it daily for news it might bring: hunches, lateralisms, frank anomalies.2004, William Gibson, Pattern Recognition, →ISBN. From the entry lateralism
  • The twisted and hunched and humped and halitotic.1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 192. From the entry halitotic
  • Kate smiled, thinking of the squat little figure hunched over her knifestories in the sand of the beach at Unalaska.1996, Dana Stabenow, Blood Will Tell, →ISBN, page 87. From the entry knifestory
  • The boxman hunches over the house chips on the left, while the stickwoman on the right eyes the dice.1996, Olaf Vancura, Smart Casino Gambling: How to Win More and Lose Less, San Diego, Calif.: Index Publishing Group, Inc., →ISBN, page 137. From the entry stickwoman
  • He just sits there, hunched over, while air explodes in-out his mouth, and beer spreads in an octopusish pattern.1994, Dennis Cooper, Try, Grove Press, →ISBN, page 73. From the entry octopusish
  • “Hey,” the test-taker who’d shhed sat up, glared, saw the exec, shut up, and hunched down over the test.1992, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, volume 112, page 70, column 1. From the entry shh
  • I didn’t want to spend it interrogating a girl just on the basis of a Holmesy hunch, did I?1971, Adrian Mitchell, The Bodyguard, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., →LCCN, page 53. From the entry Holmesy
  • Quad suits further expand on animalistic characteristics by forcing the wearer to hunch over and simulate the act of walking on four legs.2017, Torie E. Lucas, “Wolves, Dragons, and Ponies… Oh My!”: Fursonas and Stigmatization in the “Human” World, thesis submitted to the…. From the entry quad suit
  • Schreiner, a haggardly young man with messy hair and facial scruff who looked like he hadn’t slept, sat hunched over as Topp spoke.2014 February 15, Trevor Wilhelm, “Anxiety attack delays justice for man guilty of assault: One of two victims is 81”, in The Windsor…. From the entry haggardly
  • Shruggers hunch their shoulders, a movement unconsciously meant to protect your neck, signaling that the shrugger is reacting to a real or imagined threat.2011, Liz Sonneborn, Nonverbal Communication: The Art of Body Language, page 40. From the entry shrugger

Meaning of hunch

  1. noun A hump; a protuberance.
  2. noun A stooped or curled posture; a slouch.
  3. noun A theory, idea, or guess; an intuitive impression that something will happen.

Full definition of hunch

Questions about hunch in a sentence

How do you use hunch in a sentence?
Hunch is used as a noun and verb. For example: “The old man walked with a hunch.”
What is a short sentence with hunch?
“a hunch of bread”
What does hunch mean?
Hunch means a hump; a protuberance.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hunch (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this page: “How to use hunch in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/hunch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.