Hunker

Have you ‘hunkered down’ lately? Have you ever been asked to ‘hunker down’?
 
Hunker
 
Hunker is a Scottish verb of uncertain origin, from 1720, meaning to squat or crouch. Hunker may come from Old Norse huka (to crouch) or hoka (to crawl). The old northern British word hunker means haunch. The phrase ‘hunker down’, from 1902 in the Southern US, became more commonly used beginning around 1965.
 
The proper noun Hunker, from American English, 1849, meant a conservative old fogey and was a slang term used to describe conservatives of the US Democrat party in the 1840s. This version of Hunker is said to come from a local New York slang term, hunk, which meant post, station, home; hence, a Hunker was someone stayed safely at home. The word hunk or hunker was also said to be a local word for a curmudgeon, from an old British word, hunks, meaning a surly, crusty old person or miser.
 
Hunk
 
The noun hunk, from 1813, means a large piece cut off from something. The origins of the word hunk are unknown. Hunk, meaning an attractive or sexually appealing man, is from Australian slang around 1941 and American jive talk around 1945. More rudely speaking, a hunk was also a disparaging US slang term from the 1890s meaning an immigrant labourer from Central or Eastern Europe.
 
Hunky-dory, a term popularized in 1870s American popular culture, may also refer to New York slang used in children’s street games. Hunky-dory meant that you were in a safe place or base, perhaps from Middle Dutch honc (place of refuge, hiding place) which seems reasonable given that New York was a Dutch colony called New Amsterdam before the British arrived. Another theory is that hunky-dory is from Honcho Dori, supposedly a street in Yokohama, Japan, where, as noted in the Online Etymological Dictionary, “sailors went for diversions of the sort that sailors enjoy.”
 
 
Anyway, whether you’re a conservative hunk or a body builder hunk or a kid playing street games or a sailor on leave, all of us hear in the news these covid days that we need to hunker down.
 
Reference: Online Etymological Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/