slunk

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /slʌŋk/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌŋk

Etymology 1

From an allusive sense of slink (“to bring forth young prematurely”).

Noun

slunk (plural slunks)

1. An animal, especially a calf, born prematurely or abortively.
   • 1962 [1959], William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, New York: Grove Press:

     Then I met a great guy, Placenta Juan the Afterbirth Tycoon. Made his in slunks during the war. (Slunks are underage calves trailing afterbirths and bacteria, generally in an unsanitary and unfit condition.)

   • 2001, ed. Rob Cook, The Making of a Drum Company, Hal Leonard, published 2001, page 53:

     Calf heads were tanned from yearling calves less than a year in age. Slunk skins were tanned from unborn calfskins which, gruesome as it sounds, were often by products of the cow slaughtering process.

Etymology 2

Compare slank (“low place, especially one which fills with water”), dialectal slonk (“depression, hollow, slough”).

Noun

slunk (plural slunks)

1. (UK, dialectal) A slough, a low, wet, miry place. (Compare slank.)
   • 1827, William Tennant, Papistry Storm'd: Or, The Dingin' Down O' the Cathedral : Ane Poem, in Sax Sangs, page 88:

     Amang the harbour's sludge and mud; They row'd thegither in the slunk; Their heads were up, their bodies sunk; What wi' the slusch they ate and drunk,  […]

   • 1907, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Sessional Papers, page 202:

     He made the road, and since it was made there was never anything done to it except when men were carting turf and then they would fill in a "slunk." You might say now it is no road.

     }
   • (Can we date this quote?), Gordon Kendal, Gavin Douglas's Translation of 'The Aeneid' (1513), page 580:

     […] a 'slunk' is a 'slonk' (depression) with mud; […]

Etymology 3

Verb

slunk

1. simple past and past participle of slink

Anagrams

• lunks