hulk
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "hulk", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "hulk" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "hulk" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
hulk is aEnglishnoun. It means: A large ship used for transportation; (more generally) a large ship that is difficult to manoeuvre. Pronounced /hʌlk/. Often confused with hut and hum.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hulk |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /hʌlk/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #10,864 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for hulk is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /hʌlk/. Corpus data places it at rank #10,864 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for hulk, with forms such as "hhulk", "hluk", and "hukl". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "hut", "hum", "hun", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hulk, hulke, holke (“hut; shed for hogs; type of ship; husk, pod, shell; large, clumsy person; a giant”) (probably reinforced by Middle Dutch hulk, huelc, and Middle Low German hulk, holk, hollek (“freighter, cargo ship, barge”)), from O… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is hulk, spelled H-U-L-K, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A large ship used for transportation; (more generally) a large ship that is difficult to manoeuvre.
- 2A non-functional but floating ship, usually stripped of equipment and rigging, and often put to other uses such as accommodation or storage.
- 3A large structure with a dominating presence.
- 4A big (and possibly clumsy) person.
- 5A big (and possibly clumsy) person.
Etymology
From Middle English hulk, hulke, holke (“hut; shed for hogs; type of ship; husk, pod, shell; large, clumsy person; a giant”) (probably reinforced by Middle Dutch hulk, huelc, and Middle Low German hulk, holk, hollek (“freighter, cargo ship, barge”)), from Old English hulc (“light ship; heavy, clumsy ship; cabin, hovel, hut”), from Proto-West Germanic *huluk, *hulik, from Proto-Germanic *hulukaz, *hulikaz (“something hollowed or dug out, cavity”), equivalent to hole/hollow + -ock. Cognate with Old High German holcho (“cargo or transport ship, barge”) (whence Middle High German holche, modern German Holk), Old Norse hólkr (“metal tube, ring”), dialectal Norwegian holk, hylke (“wooden barrel”), Middle English holken (“to dig out, gouge”). Relation to Medieval Latin hulcus (“ship”) is uncertain, as Old English may have borrowed from Latin or vice versa, but the form holcas rather points to borrowing from Ancient Greek ὁλκάς (holkás, “ship being towed; cargo ship, ship used for trading, holcad”) (compare Ancient Greek ἕλκω (hélkō, “to drag”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *selk- (“to draw, pull”)). See more at the Old English entry hulc. The verb is derived from the noun.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: hhulk,hluk,hukl,hulkk,hullk,uhlk
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for hulk
Misspelling Variants of "hulk"
Frequency rank: #10,864 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter H in our English index: