bunk

• enPR: bŭngk, IPA^(key): /bʌŋk/

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• Rhymes: -ʌŋk

Sense of sleeping berth possibly from Scottish English bunker (“seat, bench”), origin is uncertain but possibly Scandinavian. Confer Old Swedish bunke (“boards used to protect the cargo of a ship”). See also boarding, flooring and confer bunch.

bunk (plural bunks)

1. One of a series of berths or beds placed in tiers.
   • 1913, Robert Barr, chapter 6, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad‎:

     The men resided in a huge bunk house, which consisted of one room only, with a shack outside where the cooking was done. In the large room were a dozen bunks ; half of them in a very dishevelled state, […]

2. (nautical) A built-in bed on board ship, often erected in tiers one above the other.
3. (military) A cot.
4. (US) A wooden case or box, which serves for a seat in the daytime and for a bed at night.
5. (US, dialectal) A piece of wood placed on a lumberman's sled to sustain the end of heavy timbers.

• bunk bed, bunkbed
• bunkmate
• bunkspace

bunk (third-person singular simple present bunks, present participle bunking, simple past and past participle bunked)

1. To occupy a bunk.
2. To provide a bunk.

Shortened from bunkum, a variant of buncombe, from Buncombe County, North Carolina. See bunkum for more.

bunk (uncountable)

1. (slang) Bunkum; senseless talk, nonsense.

bunk (not comparable)

1. (slang) defective, broken, not functioning properly

• See also Thesaurus:nonsense

• debunk

19th century, of uncertain origin; perhaps from previous "to occupy a bunk" meaning, with connotations of a hurried departure, as if on a ship.

bunk (third-person singular simple present bunks, present participle bunking, simple past and past participle bunked)

1. (Britain) To fail to attend school or work without permission; to play truant (usually as in 'to bunk off').
2. (dated) To expel from a school.
   • 1945, Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

     She was bunked from the convent last term. I don't quite know what for.

• “bunk” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.
• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967
• bunk in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• knub