skunk
pronunciation
How to pronounce skunk in British English:
UK [skʌŋk]
How to pronounce skunk in American English:
US [skʌŋk]
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- Noun:
- a person who is deemed to be despicable or contemptible
- a defeat in a game where one side fails to score
- street names for marijuana
- American musteline mammal typically ejecting an intensely malodorous fluid when startled; in some classifications put in a separate subfamily Mephitinae
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- Verb:
- defeat by a lurch
Word Origin
- skunk (n.)
- 1630s, squunck, from a southern New England Algonquian language (probably Abenaki) seganku, from Proto-Algonquian */šeka:kwa/, from */šek-/ "to urinate" + */-a:kw/ "fox." As an insult, attested from 1841. Skunk cabbage is attested from 1751; earlier skunkweed (1738).
- skunk (v.)
- "to completely defeat (in a game), to shut out from scoring," 1831, from skunk (n.). Related: Skunked; skunking.
Example
- 1. Even so , any skunk captured in illinois is euthanized .
- 2. Sadie had been sprayed by a skunk .
- 3. Brancato says skunk populations can grow large because they don 't really have any natural predators .
- 4. Brancato and owen find the skunk in a small cage in homeowner richard kaulback 's leafy backyard .
- 5. Code-named thinthread it had been developed by technological wizards in a kind of skunk works on the n. s. a.campus .