crunk
/kɹʌŋk/
"crunk" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“crunk” is uncommon English (frequency #72,212 among 43,570 “C” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #72,212
- frequency rank, English
- 43,570
- “C” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Crazy and intoxicated.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | crunk |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /kɹʌŋk/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #72,212 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “crunk” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
crunk is uncommon English at frequency #72,212 among 43,570 “C” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed /kɹʌŋk/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Crazy and intoxicated.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for crunk, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. No confusable counterpart is on file for this word, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: Attested in the Southern US since the late 1980s, originally in the sense of “rowdy, high energy out-of-control behavior by a crowd at Southern night clubs”. Popularized by its use in the fusion genre of crunk music in the 1990s and especially early 2000s. … The correct English form is crunk, spelled C-R-U-N-K.
Definition
- 1Crazy and intoxicated.
Etymology
Attested in the Southern US since the late 1980s, originally in the sense of “rowdy, high energy out-of-control behavior by a crowd at Southern night clubs”. Popularized by its use in the fusion genre of crunk music in the 1990s and especially early 2000s. In this context, first used in music lyrics and notably popularized by Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz, on their 1997 debut album Get Crunk, Who U Wit: Da Album. Various possible origins have been proposed: * Blend of crazy + drunk “crazy drunk”. * Blend of chronic (“marijuana”) + drunk “high on marijuana and drunk (on alcohol) at the same time”. * From a dialectal past tense of crank. See Crunk: etymology at Wikipedia for further information. There is no evidence of any connection with Yiddish or German krank (“sick, ill”), nor that it entered the Southern Black vernacular through the presence of European Jewish immigrant shopkeepers in black neighborhoods in cities such as Atlanta. The phonetic similarity of the words is considered a coincidence.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “crunk”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-R-U-N-K - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /kɹʌŋk/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.