different between zonk vs zonky

English

Etymology

First attested around 1950. Unknown origin, likely imitative, of echoic origin.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /z??k/
• Rhymes: -??k

Noun

zonk (plural zonks)

1. An unfavorable card or token, or undesirable or worthless item used as a prize in a contest or game show (such as Let's Make a Deal).
   • 2003-10-1, Gregory Arthur Baer Life: The Odds (And How to Improve Them), Penguin, ?ISBN, page 237

     There will always be two doors that hold zonks, so regardless of whether you initially chose the grand prize or a zonk, Monty will always be able to show you a zonk not chosen.

   • 2003-12-30, Jerrilyn Farmer, Mumbo Gumbo: A Madeline Bean Novel, HarperCollins, ?ISBN, page 204:

     A live, mane-embellished, SAG-card-carrying lion, I should point out, who was likely being staged for a few minutes off to the side before he would be used as a freaking “Zonk!” on a freaking game show, for crying out loud.

   • 2004, Jay Mechling, On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth, University of Chicago Press, ?ISBN, page 124

     A zonk was way overdue, yet the boys knew that the Seniors knew they would think this was a zonk and would trick the boys by making this another real prize.

   • 2004, Timothy V. Rasinski, Nancy Padak, Effective reading strategies: teaching children who find reading difficult, Pearson/Prentice Hall, ?ISBN, page 150

     I have three empty coffee cans, two with prizes and one with a slip of paper that says "Zonk."

   • 2006-05-09, Bruce Frey, Statistics hacks, O'Reilly Media, ?ISBN, page 208:

     Avoid the Zonk / On the TV show Let's Make a Deal, contestants often had to choose between three curtains.

   • 2008, Max H. Bazerman, Don A. Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, John Wiley & Sons, ?ISBN, page 53:

     Once a contestant picked a door, Monty would often open one of the other two doors to reveal a zonk, ...

   • 2009, Victor Shoup, A Computational Introduction to Number Theory and Algebra, Cambridge University Press, ?ISBN, page 217:

     Behind two doors is a “zonk,” that is, something amusing but of little or no value, such as a goat, ...

2. (slang) A feeling of a drug taking hold.

Translations

Verb

zonk (third-person singular simple present zonks, present participle zonking, simple past and past participle zonked)

1. To hit hard [1950].
2. (transitive) To make (someone) sleepy or delirious, to put into a stupor [1968].
3. (intransitive, usually followed by “out”) To become exhausted, sleepy or delirious.

   After two hours of studying, I zonked out.

Derived terms

• zonk out
• zonked

Translations

Anagrams

• Konz

Dutch

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -??k

Verb

zonk

1. singular past indicative of zinken

English

Etymology

zonk +? -y

Pronunciation

Adjective

zonky (comparative more zonky, superlative most zonky)

1. (slang) Very fatigued; zonked.
   • 2005, Susan K. Lorenz, Choose a Miracle (page 93)

     And I feel kind of zonky this morning. Maybe I needed the sleep.

   • 2011, P. J. Hoge, Z: Fourth in the Prairie Preacher Series (page 151)

     She was much better before the medicine made her all zonky.

2. (slang) Weird, odd, eccentric.
   • 1965, Kurt Vonnegut, “Infarcted! Tabescent!” The New York Times, 27 June, 1965,^[2]

     He knows all the stuff that Arthur Schlesinger Jr., knows, keeps picking up brand new, ultra-contemporary stuff that nobody else knows, and arrives at zonky conclusions couched in scholarly terms.

   • 1977, Pauline Kael, “Drip-Dry Comedy” in When the Lights Go Down, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980, p. 361,^[3]

     […] she doesn’t have the precision of a Jean Arthur, yet she has some of that rueful, fluffy-in-the-head charm of someone whose brains are addled by her sexual impulses, and she adds the blur in the expression and those tremulous, zonky eyes.

   • 1979, Bernard Malamud, Dubin’s Lives, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, Chapter One, p. 22,^[4]

     “I tried the State Employment Office and all the guy there does is show you unemployment figures for the county and shakes his head. Makes you feel zonky.”

   • 2005, Michael Cunningham, Specimen Days, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “Like Beauty,” p. 242,^[5]

     Gradually Simon’s powers of movement returned. He felt them coming back. It was a growing warmth, an inner blooming. He was able to say, “Guess I went a little zonky back there, huh?”

References