Word.ws English Dictionary

spunk-water

spunk-water is the alternative form of stump-water.

Meaning of stump-water

Noun

stump-water (uncountable)

  1. Stagnant water from a hollow in a rotting tree stump.
    • She thought about how folks believed that if you ducked your head in oak stump water, your straight hair would grow out curly. She had always wanted to try it, but Ma forbade it, and besides, oak stump water stunk sour.2004, Aileen Kilgore Henderson, Hard Times for Jake Smith, Chapter VI
    Synonyms:
    spunk-water
  2. (derogatory) Inferior beer or similar beverage.

Origin of spunk-water

Regional variant of stump-water. Popularised by Mark Twain in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Questions about spunk-water

What is spunk-water the alternative form of?
Spunk-water is the alternative form of stump-water.

Words near spunk-water in the dictionary

  1. spunging-houses
  2. spunion
  3. spunions
  4. spunk
  5. spunk off
  6. spunk-water
  7. spunked
  8. spunked off
  9. spunkier
  10. spunkies
  11. spunkiest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spunk-water (page history and authors); stump-water (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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Cite this entry: “spunk-water.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spunk-water. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.