Words / H / General

hunker

verb/ˈhʌŋkə/

B2CEFR level
50/100Rarity: uncommon
InformalRegister

To squat or crouch down low, resting on the haunches.

The soldiers hunkered behind the wall as the shelling began.

Similar: squat, crouch, cower

Origin: 18th-c. Scots, perhaps from Old Norse 'huka', to crouch.

Topic: crouching in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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