hunker
/ˈhʌŋkə/
"hunker" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“hunker” is uncommon English (frequency #57,442 among 2,646 “H” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #57,442
- frequency rank, English
- 2,646
- “H” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To crouch or squat close to the ground or lie down
Corpus desk
Index EN-hunker · hunker · English
hunker · rank #57,442 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #57,442
- LEN-LONG 6 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,646
- PHOTO-FINISH humdrum
Nearest frequency peer: humdrum (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Long-tail ranks near “hunker”
Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter
- hoverboard
hoverboard
42,562 corpus weight
- HRD
HRD
42,561 corpus weight
- humdrum
humdrum
42,560 corpus weight
- hunker
hunker
42,559 corpus weight
- Huy
Huy
42,558 corpus weight
- ibu
ibu
42,556 corpus weight
What this shows Long-tail view: where “hunker” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hunker |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ˈhʌŋkə/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #57,442 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “hunker” in English
Rare enough to double-check
hunker is uncommon English at frequency #57,442 among 2,646 “H” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed /ˈhʌŋkə/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for hunker, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: Originally Scottish. Origin uncertain, but probably of Germanic origin, perhaps *hunk- a nasalised variant of *huk- (compare Scots hoonk, hounk, variants of huk, hok (“to squat, crouch”); Scots hocker (“to crouch down, hunker”)), all of North Germanic origi… The correct English form is hunker, spelled H-U-N-K-E-R.
Definition
- 1To crouch or squat close to the ground or lie down
- 2To apply oneself to a task
Etymology
Originally Scottish. Origin uncertain, but probably of Germanic origin, perhaps *hunk- a nasalised variant of *huk- (compare Scots hoonk, hounk, variants of huk, hok (“to squat, crouch”); Scots hocker (“to crouch down, hunker”)), all of North Germanic origin, from Old Norse huka (“to crouch”), from Proto-Germanic *hūkan- (“to squat”), from *hūkkan-, back-formed from the iterative *huk(k)ōn-, from Proto-Indo-European *kuk-néh₂, from *kewk- (“to curve, bend”) (also the source of high). Probable cognates include Old Norse húka, Dutch huiken, and German hocken.
This word in other languages
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "hunker", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 6 letters (nearest by frequency rank).