hunky

1 of 2

adjective

hunkier; hunkiest
: being a hunk : attractive and usually well-built
the film's hunky leading man

Hunky

2 of 2

noun

Hun·​ky ˈhəŋ-kē How to pronounce Hunky (audio)
variants or less commonly Hunkie
plural Hunkies
dated, usually disparaging + offensive
: a person of central or east European birth or descent

Examples of hunky in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
Adjective
Transforming hunky men into fellow queens — with a strong family resemblance, of course — the girls also had to teach their new drag daughters how to work the runway with a short choreographed number. Stephen Daw, Billboard, 2 Apr. 2024 Bachelor Nation came to know and love Tyler Cameron as the hunky general contractor who almost got engaged to Hannah Brown on season 15 of ABC's The Bachelorette. Kristen Baldwin, EW.com, 2 Apr. 2024 Everyone here, hooting at the hunky Jesus, felt lucky. Curbed, 10 May 2023 In fact, the abrupt and ignoble death of his fan-favorite character, the hunky werewolf Alcide Herveaux, early in the final season of the HBO show left him eager to make up for it. Jessica Wang, EW.com, 13 Mar. 2024 Henry’s first adult romance novel, Beach Read, came out in 2020 and follows its romance-author protagonist in a summer bet with her hunky neighbor (a literary fiction author) to convince him of the genre’s merit—a cheeky meta-commentary of sorts about her own writing. Cnt Editors, Condé Nast Traveler, 8 Mar. 2024 Fixing Spanish Cinema Not that everything is hunky dory for Spanish cinema. John Hopewell, Variety, 8 Mar. 2024 Move over, One Direction: There’s a new five-piece, British, hunky boy band in town. Hannah Dailey, Billboard, 6 Mar. 2024 The film’s other special something is Tews, who stars as a hunky fur trapper named Jean Kayak who wins over a woman by selling beaver pelts to her overprotective father. Erik Piepenburg, New York Times, 5 Mar. 2024

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hunky.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Noun

alteration of Hungarian

First Known Use

Adjective

1972, in the meaning defined above

Noun

circa 1896, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of hunky was circa 1896

Dictionary Entries Near hunky

Cite this Entry

“Hunky.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hunky. Accessed 17 Apr. 2024.

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