Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a male homosexual, or an effeminate heterosexual man.

1941		F. Sargeson ‘That Summer’ in Coll. Stories (1965) 175: He was a tonk all right, just a real old auntie.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 240/2: tonk – dude, in contemptuous sense.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 215: tonk 1. Effeminate male [...] ANZ from mid C20.

2. a fool.

1941		Baker Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. 77: Tonk, a simpleton or fool. [...] (3) A general term of contempt.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 215: tonk 2. In some secondary schools in Britain and Australasia ‘tonk’ was a term of abuse.

3. someone whose speech appears to set them above their peers.

1970

R. Beilby No Medals for Aphrodite 32: ‘You’re a good bloke, Turk, but sometimes you talk like a tonk.’ [...] And so, he took care not to talk like a tonk [....] he had adopted their sloppy, profanity-riddled speech.

4. a muscular, sexually alluring individual.

2017

theculturetrip.com ‘Guide to London Slang 10 Jan. 🌐 Tonk – muscular or big people you want to have sex with.

5. (US) a derog. term applied to migrants crossing a US border [poss. ext. of sense 2; proposed etys include acro traveler, origin not known but more likely echoic tonk! the sound of a hard object, e.g. a fist or baton, hitting flesh].

2024

Guardian 6 Mar. 🌐 Kelly Wright, a sociolinguist and lexicographer [...] says that ‘tonk’ has referred to a thumping sound for a century, while she sees ‘no evidence’ to suggest the word is an acronym. The [...] word echoes physical harm against a specific group [and] reflects the fully sanctioned [...] and perhaps even celebrated nature of the violence it describes.