Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To throw or place heavily or abruptly.
- intransitive verb To strum or pluck (a stringed instrument).
- intransitive verb To drop or fall abruptly or heavily; plump.
- intransitive verb To emit a hollow twanging sound.
- noun Informal A heavy blow or stroke.
- noun A short hollow twanging sound.
- adverb With a short hollow thud.
- adverb Exactly; precisely.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To strike suddenly, with a dull sound; knock; bang: as, they plunked him with stones.
- To knock (away); knock (from).
- To shoot; fill full of ‘lead’ (missiles).
- To pluck (a stringed instrument) so as to produce a low or deep sound; in general, twang.
- To make or emit an abrupt and usually heavy sound: especially used of the rough sounding of a stringed instrument, and sometimes strung out with arbitrary variations (as in the quotation).
- To croak or cry as a raven.
- To plunge or drop down abruptly.
- Suddenly; plump: as, he came plunk against the half-open door.
- noun A hard, dull blow: as, to hit one a plunk.
- noun A twang; a twanging sound: as, the plunk-plunk of the banjo.
- noun A dollar.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb To pluck and release quickly (a musical string); to twang.
- transitive verb To throw, push, drive heavily, plumply, or suddenly; ; also, to hit or strike.
- transitive verb Scot. To be a truant from (school).
- intransitive verb To make a quick, hollow, metallic, or harsh sound, as by pulling hard on a taut string and quickly releasing it; of a raven, to croak.
- intransitive verb To drop or sink down suddenly or heavily; to plump.
- intransitive verb Scot. To play truant, or “hooky”.
- noun colloq. Act or sound of plunking.
- noun obsolete, United States, United States A large sum of money.
- noun United States A dollar.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To
drop orthrow heavily (onto or into something) so that it makes a sound
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb make or move along with a sound as of a horse's hooves striking the ground
- noun a hollow twanging sound
- verb drop steeply
- adverb with a short hollow thud
- noun (baseball) hitting a baseball so that it drops suddenly
- verb pull lightly but sharply with a plucking motion
- verb set (something or oneself) down with or as if with a noise
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and
Local Color 2010
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And cash it was made, thirty PLUNKS (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and
Local Colour 1906
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And cash it was made, thirty PLUNKS (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight.
Word of the Day 2009
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The four-legged power droid is called a plunk droid, and sure enough, that's what it says as it shuffles about.
unknown title 2008
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Every desk has a stapler and everyone has had that oddly hollow feeling when they push down on it and get that hollow "plunk" of an empty chamber.
Marc Hershon: Eight White Elephants: Re-Gifting at the Holiday Office Party 2009
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You are seeing some time laps of tinker-toy-type construction that goes on up there, as they use the robot arms to just kind of plunk it right on.
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The fiord, by my recollection, is never more than a mile or a mile and a half wide at the utmost, and we came "plunk" up against the head of this fiord with a 3650-foot cliff, which we scaled, and tried to make our charts or cross observations from the top.
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They heard the dull "plunk" of his sinker as he flung it into a deep, still pool.
A Little Bush Maid Mary Grant Bruce 1918
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For a time no sound was heard save the dull "plunk" of sinkers as the lines, one by one, were flung into the water.
A Little Bush Maid Mary Grant Bruce 1918
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After dinner they would sit together on the veranda, watching the moon rise over the rim of that wonderful valley, listening to the tree-toads in noisy convention or hearkening to the "plunk" of a trout leaping in the river below.
The Long Chance 1918
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