different between zonky vs wonky

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

English

Etymology 1

From English dialectal wanky, alteration of Middle English wankel (“unstable, shaky”), from Old English wancol (“unstable”), from Proto-West Germanic *wankul (“swaying, shaky, unstable”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?w???.k?/
• (US) enPR: w?ng?k?, IPA^(key): /?w??.ki/, /?w??.ki/
• Rhymes: -??ki

Adjective

wonky (comparative wonkier, superlative wonkiest)

1. Lopsided, misaligned or off-centre.

   Synonyms: awry, lonkie, misaligned, skew-whiff

2. (chiefly Britain, Australia, New Zealand) Feeble, shaky or rickety.

   Synonym: rickety
3. (informal, computing, especially Usenet) Suffering from intermittent bugs.

   Synonyms: buggy, broken

4. (informal) Generally incorrect.

Derived terms

• wonky hole

Noun

wonky (uncountable)

1. (music) A subgenre of electronic music employing unstable rhythms, complex time signatures, and mid-range synths.
   • 2015, Jan Kyrre Berg O. Friis, Robert P. Crease, Technoscience and Postphenomenology: The Manhattan Papers

     By the late 2000s, dubstep had splintered into numerous factions, from brostep to wonky to the evocative “purple,” […]

Etymology 2

wonk +? -y

Adjective

wonky (comparative wonkier, superlative wonkiest)

1. Technically worded, in the style of jargon.
   • 2009, Jesse Dale Holcomb, Faith, Science and Trust: Climate Change Framing Effects and Conservative Protestant Opinion

     Climate change is an issue that might lend itself more easily to thematic framing in the news, due to the often highly technical and wonky language required to explain it.

   • 2010, Michael Maslansky, Scott West, Gary DeMoss, David Saylor, The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics

     McCain's message, while similar in content and equally as valid, is lost in the minutiae of “'high-risk' pools” and wonky jargon.

Anagrams

• y'know