zonk

/zɔːŋk/

zonk noun: an unfavorable card or token, or undesirable or worthless item used as a prize in a contest or game show (such as Let's Make a Deal).

Noun

zonk (plural zonks)

(slang) An unfavorable card or token, or undesirable or worthless item used as a prize in a contest or game show (such as Let's Make a Deal).
- There will always be two doors that hold zonks, so regardless of whether you initially chose the grand prize or a zonk, Monty will always be able to show you a zonk not chosen.2003 October 1, Gregory Arthur Baer, Life: The Odds (And How to Improve Them), Penguin, →ISBN, page 237
- A live, mane-embellished, SAG-card-carrying lion, I should point out, who was likely being staged for a few minutes off to the side before he would be used as a freaking “Zonk!” on a freaking game show, for crying out loud.2003 December 30, Jerrilyn Farmer, Mumbo Gumbo: A Madeline Bean Novel, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 204
(slang) The feeling of a drug taking hold.
(slang) A cigarette hand-rolled from tobacco and cannabis.

Verb

zonk (third-person singular simple present zonks, present participle zonking, simple past and past participle zonked)

(slang, transitive) To hit hard.
(slang, transitive) To make (someone) sleepy or delirious, to put into a stupor.
(intransitive, slang) To become exhausted, sleepy, or delirious.
- After two hours of studying, I zonked out.

zonk meaning in Urdu

zonk in Urdu

بےحس ہو جانا, سکتے میں آجانا

Examples of zonk in a sentence

A zonk was way overdue, yet the boys knew that the Seniors knew they would think this was a zonk and would trick the boys by making this another real prize.2004, Jay Mechling, On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 124:
I have three empty coffee cans, two with prizes and one with a slip of paper that says "Zonk."2004, Timothy V. Rasinski, Nancy Padak, Effective reading strategies: teaching children who find reading difficult, Pearson/Prentice Hall...
Avoid the Zonk / On the TV show Let's Make a Deal, contestants often had to choose between three curtains.2006 May 9, Bruce Frey, Statistics hacks, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 208:
Once a contestant picked a door, Monty would often open one of the other two doors to reveal a zonk,[…]2008, Max H. Bazerman, Don A. Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 53:

Forms of zonk

Noun
plural	zonks
alternative form	zoink
Verb
third-person singular present	zonks
present participle	zonking
past participle	zonked
past	zonked

Origin of zonk

First attested in c. 1950. Unknown origin, likely imitative, of echoic origin.

Words formed from zonk

Questions about zonk

What does zonk mean?: Zonk means an unfavorable card or token, or undesirable or worthless item used as a prize in a contest or game show (such as Let's Make a Deal).
What is zonk in Urdu?: Zonk in Urdu is بےحس ہو جانا, سکتے میں آجانا. See Zonk meaning in Urdu.
How do you use zonk in a sentence?: A zonk was way overdue, yet the boys knew that the Seniors knew they would think this was a zonk and would trick the boys by making this another real prize.
What part of speech is zonk?: Zonk can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce zonk?: Zonk is pronounced /zɔːŋk/.
What is the plural of zonk?: The plural of zonk is zonks.

Words near zonk in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: zonk (page history and authors); zonk (Urdu Wiktionary) (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: 2026-09-02

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

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