Word.ws English Dictionary

tonks

tonks is the plural of tonk.

tonks is the third-person singular simple present indicative of tonk.

Meaning of tonk

Noun (1)

tonk (plural tonks)

  1. (US, derogatory, slang) An illegal immigrant of any country.
    • 1990: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary, Confirmation Hearings on Federal Appointments: Hearings Before the Committee - An agent, Larry Moy, when asked to define the derivation of the term “tonk,” replied: “...it's the sound of flashlight hitting somebody's head, tonk"....

Noun (2)

tonk (countable and uncountable, plural tonks)

  1. (slang) An item or items of value, or of perceived value, especially for sale.
    • How much tonk have we got to shift?

Noun (3)

tonk (uncountable)

  1. A matching card game, combining features of knock rummy and conquian.
    • It has big deep-down chairs and a card table by the window covered with jade, dracena and doctor plants until they want to have card games or play tonk between themselves.1992, Toni Morrison, Jazz, Vintage (2016), page 13

Noun (4)

tonk (plural tonks)

  1. A sound produced by knocking on something hollow.
  2. (colloquial) A resounding strike of the ball; a powerful hit of the ball with the bat.

Noun (5)

tonk (plural tonks)

  1. (slang) A tank.

See all 11 meanings of tonk

Noun capitalized: Tonks

Tonks

  1. (plural) plural of Tonk

Proper noun capitalized: Tonks

Tonks (plural Tonkses)

  1. A surname originating as a patronymic.

Forms of tonks

pluralTonkses

Origin of tonks

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

From a back-formation of Tomkin, from Thomas + the patronymic suffix -s.

Phrases with tonks

Questions about tonks

What does tonks mean?
Tonks means a surname originating as a patronymic.
What is tonks the plural of?
Tonks is the plural of tonk.
What part of speech is tonks?
Tonks can be a noun or a proper noun.

Words near tonks in the dictionary

  1. Tonkinson
  2. Tonkiss
  3. Tonkisses
  4. Tonkolili
  5. tonkotsu
  6. tonks
  7. Tonkses
  8. Tonle Bati
  9. Tonle Sap
  10. tonlet
  11. tonlets

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tonks (page history and authors); Tonks (page history and authors); tonk (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.

Last updated:

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