chunk

English
A chunk of silicon carbide.

Etymology

Variant of chuck; or alternatively a diminutive of chump (“chunk; block”) +‎ *-k (diminutive suffix) (compare hunk from hump, etc.).

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /t͡ʃʌŋk/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ʌŋk

Noun

chunk (plural chunks)

  1. A part of something that has been separated.
    The statue broke into chunks.
    • 1910, Jack London, Burning Daylight:
      Daylight, between mouthfuls, fed chunks of ice into the tin pot, where it thawed into water. ... Daylight cut up generous chunks of bacon and dropped them in the pot of bubbling beans.
  2. A representative portion of a substance, often large and irregular.
    a chunk of granite
  3. (linguistics, education) A sequence of two or more words that occur in language with high frequency but are not idiomatic; a bundle or cluster.
    examples of chunks would include "in accordance with", "the results of", and "so far"
  4. (computing) A discrete segment of a file, stream, etc. (especially one that represents audiovisual media); a block.
    • 1994, Paul J Perry, Multimedia developer's guide
      The first DWORD of a chunk data in the RIFF chunk is a four character code value identifying the form type of the file.
  5. (comedy) A segment of a comedian's performance

Translations

See also

Further reading
  • chunk in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
  • chunk in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Verb

chunk (third-person singular simple present chunks, present participle chunking, simple past and past participle chunked)

  1. (transitive) To break into large pieces or chunks.
  2. (transitive) To break down (language, etc.) into conceptual chunks of manageable size.
    • 2005, Yong Zhao, Research in Technology and Second Language Education
      These results offer tentative evidence that suggests that certain components of computer-mediated instruction (in this case, access to and control over syntactically chunked, captioned video) are not necessarily beneficial for certain learners […]
  3. (transitive, slang, chiefly Southern US) To throw.

Derived terms
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