Word.ws English Dictionary

yonker

yonker is the obsolete spelling of younker.

Meaning of younker

Noun

younker (plural younkers)

  1. (archaic) A young man; a lad, youngster.
    • “Jim,” says he, “I reckon we’re fouled, you and me, and we’ll have to sign articles. I’d have had you but for that there lurch, but I don’t have no luck, not I; and I reckon I’ll have to strike, which comes hard, you see, for a master mariner to a ship’s younker like you, Jim.”1883, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
  2. (obsolete) A young gentleman or knight.
    • So foorth they went, and both together giusted;
      But that same younker soone was overthrowne1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
  3. (obsolete) A novice; a simpleton; a dupe.
    • Trimmed like a younker prancing to his love!c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
  4. junker

See all 5 meanings of younker

Proper noun capitalized: Yonker

Yonker (plural Yonkers)

  1. A surname.

Forms of yonker

Noun
pluralyonkers
Proper noun
pluralYonkers

Origin of yonker

From Adriaen van der Donck, the first lawyer in North America. Van der Donck was known locally as the Jonkheer or Jonker (etymologically, "young gentleman," derivation of old Dutch jong (young) and heer ("lord"); in effect, "esquire"), a word from which the name "Yonkers" is directly derived.

Words that rhyme with yonker

Questions about yonker

What does yonker mean?
Yonker means a surname.
What is yonker the obsolete spelling of?
Yonker is the obsolete spelling of younker.
What part of speech is yonker?
Yonker is a proper noun.

Words near yonker in the dictionary

  1. yonis
  2. Yonkalla
  3. yonkapin
  4. yonkapins
  5. Yonke
  6. yonker
  7. yonkers
  8. Yonkersite
  9. Yonkersites
  10. Yonkes
  11. yonkoma

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yonker (page history and authors); Yonker (page history and authors); younker (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: “yonker.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/yonker. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.