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Funk   /fəŋk/   Listen
noun
Funk  n.  
1.
An offensive smell; a stench. (Low)
2.
One who funks; a shirk; a coward. (Colloq.)
3.
A state of fear.
4.
A mildly depressed state of mind; often used in the phrase blue funk.


Funk  n.  An earthy, seemingly unsophisticated style of jazz music having elements of black American blues and gospel.


Funking, Funk  n.  A shrinking back through fear. (Colloq.) "The horrid panic, or funk (as the men of Eton call it)."


verb
Funk  v. t.  
1.
To envelop with an offensive smell or smoke. (Obs.)
2.
To funk at; to flinch at; to shrink from (a thing or person); as, to funk a task. (Colloq.)
3.
To frighten; to cause to flinch. (Colloq.)


Funk  v. i.  
1.
To emit an offensive smell; to stink.
2.
To be frightened, and shrink back; to flinch; as, to funk at the edge of a precipice. (Colloq.)
To funk out, to back out in a cowardly fashion. (Colloq.) "To funk right out o' political strife."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Funk" Quotes from Famous Books



... when her two guests entered the shop. Unembarrassed she beamed on both and signed to Macgregor to go 'right in.' So Macgregor conducted his friend, who during the journey had betrayed increasing indications of 'funk,' into the absent owner's living-room, which Christina had contrived to make brighter looking than for ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... then send you home with some microscopic doses of aconite. The best that could be said of him was that he never really harmed anybody, scalded the poor for nothing, and was willing (and even pressing) to turn over serious cases to the regular practitioner, Dr. Funk. ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... there are days when I ask myself whether I shall be able to draw a nose correctly. Yes, with every one of my pictures I still feel the emotion of a beginner; my heart beats, anguish parches my mouth—in fact, I funk abominably. Ah! you youngsters, you think you know what funk means; but you haven't as much as a notion of it, for if you fail with one work, you get quits by trying to do something better. Nobody is down upon you; whereas we, the veterans, who have given our measure, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... he had known who had chosen to escape from poverty by a different road from the clean, straight one of hard work. She had funked the sharp corners of life, that other, in a way in which this girl with the clear, brown-gold eyes that met the World so squarely would never funk them. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... his shoes—he was the only one of the five sporting that luxury—and discovered in the toe of one of them a still larger booty. The last of the group was a cheery little fellow barely four feet high, likable in spite of his ingrained lifetime lack of soap. He showed no funk, and when ordered to undress turned to the "gringo" manager with: "Me too, jefe?" Then he quickly stripped, proving himself not only honest but the biggest little giant imaginable. He had a chest like ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck


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