onkus
Appearance
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Unknown. Australian from 1903, New Zealand from 1909. Compare slightly earlier onky.[1]
Adjective
[edit]onkus (comparative more onkus, superlative most onkus)
- (Australia, New Zealand, slang, dated) Inferior; unpleasant; unacceptably bad.
- 1981, Herman Charles Bosman, The Collected Works of Herman Charles Bosman, page 101:
- The soup was crook. It was onkus. A yellow-bellied platypus couldn′t drink it […]
- (New Zealand, slang, rare, obsolete) Good; acceptable; okay.
References
[edit]- ^ “onkus adj.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present