dank
/ˈdeɪ̯ŋk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.26 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Moist and sticky, (by extension) highly potent.
adj
Expounding right-wing views in a cool way; based.
Example Sentences
- "The dank cave was chilly and spooky."
- "Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire."
- "Cheerless watches on the cold, dank ground."
- "Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, / Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank / Soil to a plash? [...]"
- "It's a world away from the dank and uninviting St Pancras that British Rail wanted to tear down in the 1960s."
- "That was dank bud."
Etymology
From Middle English danke (“wet, damp; dampness, moisture”), probably from North Germanic, related to Swedish dank (“marshy spot”), Icelandic dökk (“pool”), Old Norse dǫkk (“pit, depression”), from Proto-Germanic *dankwaz (“dark”). However, some trace it to a West Germanic source such as Dutch damp (“vapor”) or Middle High German damph, both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *dampaz (“smoke, steam, vapor”). Modern slang senses derived from the drug sense; compare based (“awesome, especially in a right-wing context online”) from drug terminology freebased.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈdeɪ̯ŋk/