Word.ws English Dictionary

wankery

wankery noun: unnecessary or pretentious noodling (messing around).

Noun

wankery (uncountable)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, slang, vulgar) Unnecessary or pretentious noodling (messing around).
    • The core band, meanwhile, had clearly honed their chops well on stage; Ashton's lead guitar work avoids both wankery and simplicity […]2002, Vladimir Bogdanov, Chris Woodstra, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock
    • Their visas entailed bribes and a certain amount of bureaucratic wankery, but were approved quickly enough.2003, Marshall Moore, The Concrete Sky

Examples of wankery in a sentence

  • There are moments of static beauty, haunting sparseness, and pointless wankery, sometimes all in the same tune.2003, Jim DeRogatis, Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock:
  • K was pretty much the opposite of that kind of macho wankery.2007, Everett True, Nirvana: The Biography:

Origin of wankery

From wank + -ery.

Words formed from wankery

Questions about wankery

What does wankery mean?
Wankery means unnecessary or pretentious noodling (messing around).
How do you use wankery in a sentence?
There are moments of static beauty, haunting sparseness, and pointless wankery, sometimes all in the same tune.
What part of speech is wankery?
Wankery is a noun.

Words near wankery in the dictionary

  1. wanker's cramp
  2. wankerdom
  3. wankered
  4. wankerish
  5. wankers
  6. wankery
  7. Wankes
  8. wankette
  9. wankettes
  10. wankface
  11. wankfaces

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wankery (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-wankery.ogg.

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