bunk n.2
1. (orig. US) rubbish, nonsense, usu. of speech, occas. of inferior objects; also constr. with the; bunky adj., nonsensical.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | in Schaaf Mr Dooley’s Chicago (1977) 50: That is th’ real Irish village [...] I think th’ other one from Donegal is a sort of bunk, I do, an’ I niver liked Donegal. | |
| Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 194: You kin buy Chinese souvenirs real cheap here [...] while all other places is bunks. | |
| Maison De Shine 133: He can’t do no imitations like me, an’ his act’s the bunk. [Ibid.] 225: Their act was a bunk. | |
| ‘The Pitch-Out’ in Lucky Seventh (2004) 284: ‘That’s the bunk!’ said Curly earnestly. | |
| Chicago Trib. 25 May 10/1: History is more or less bunk. | |
| in Witemeyer Pound/Williams Correspondence (1996) 37: Not that I care a curse for ANY nation as such or that, so far as I know, I have ever suggested that I was trying to write U.S. poetry (any more than you are writing Alexandrine Greek bunk). | |
| West Broadway 33: ‘Don’t you think all this talk of the Soviet spreading over the world is more or less the bunk?’. | |
| Nigger Heaven 63: We’re more or less like the others when it comes to handing the bunk to the ofays. | |
| (con. 1900s–10s) 42nd Parallel in USA (1966) 321: He said that the Twin Cities was the bunk. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Flirt & Flapper 11: Flapper: But you thought about kisses [...] we know they’re the bunk. | |
| ‘Freddie the Freshman’ 🎵 Alpha! Delta! Skelta! Latin is the bunk! | |
| ‘Cheer Up! Smile! Nertz!’ 🎵 Sure, business is bunk, / And Wall Street is sunk. | |
| Phenomena in Crime 218: A lot of bunk has been written about con-men. | |
| Lady in the Lake (1952) 21: I know what that wire says, but it’s the bunk. | |
| Tough Guy [ebook] You’re an ugly monk / Whiskey is the bunk. | |
| Corner Boy 197: You think it’s [i.e. prison] glamorous like the movies? Don’t believe that bunk, it’s hell. | |
| Reinhart in Love (1963) 35: The truth [...] is that things are exactly as they appear, and symbols are the bunk. | |
| Mute Witness (1997) 34: That’s a lot of bunk and you know it, he added to himself. | |
| Picture Palace 219: ‘I wasn’t going to do you.’ This was a different voice. ‘Bunk.’. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | About Face (1991) 214: George Catlett Marshall had tasked himself with ridding Benning of the ‘bunk, complications and ponderosities.’. | |
| (con. early 1950s) L.A. Confidential 154: This background check shit is the bunk. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Love Bites and Other Stories 104: You’ll hear people saying that fortune-telling is bunk. | |
| Mad mag. July 37: That whole thing about stuff staying in Vegas is bunk. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 135: ‘[A]ll rumors about Monroe and powerful politicians are bunk’. |
2. a fraudulent scheme, a confidence trick.
| Barkeep Stories 79: ‘If I don't stand fer as purty a bit o’ de bunk as ever was framed up I hope de coppers ’ll close de joint’. | |
| Philosophy of Johnny the Gent 37: The American public love to be humbugged, [...] They like the bunk, an’ they always will take to it like a kid to a candy stand. | |
| Confessions of a Con Man 117: He looked over the shell games, the cloth and the roll-out, and pronounced them a bunk. | |
| Sun (NY) 27 July 40/1: ‘It’s tough for the boys, but the pay-ff is good nearly any time.’ ‘The pay-off [...] I don’t get you, Jimmy. A new kind of bunk?’. |
3. a foolish or otherwise unsatisfactory person.
| Mop Fair 31: A suspicious woman who has lost her temper is the prize bunk of the universe. | |
| ‘For the Pictures’ in Taking the Count 339: He oughta known that fellow Isaacs was the bunk. | |
| ‘Sweet, Tight and Hella Stupid’ in S.F. University High School Update Mar.–Apr. 2: bunk – a [...] person that another finds objectionable. |
4. (US tramp) good manners.
| ‘Jargon of the Und.’ in DN V 441: Bunk, Politeness. |
5. as counterfeit drink or drugs.
(a) (US Und.) synthetic liquor.
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). |
(b) (drugs) fake cocaine or heroin.
| Central Sl. 13: bunk Ersatz dope [...] ‘It ain’t the caine, man, it bunk! Mother fucking bunk!’. | |
| Mr Blue 252: I told him if it [i.e. heroin] was bunk why in Mary’s name did he shoot it all. |
(c) (US drugs) fake phencyclidine.
| Pain Killers 172: Them fools in there was soaking lint in dry-cleaning fluid and callin’ it PCP [...] lemme tell you, mang, sherm was fuckin’ pasteurized milk compared to this bunk. |
In compounds
(US) a talker of nonsense; a hyperbolist.
| McClure’s Mag. 32 98/1: Better bust away from that Domino bunk artist, an’ square yourself to home. | |
| Tacoma Times (WA) 14 Sept. 1/3: He is a blatant, arrogant, puffed-up bunk artist. | |
 | Fakers 42: If there is any kind of a bunk artist, faker, charlatan, demagogue, or other professional friend of the people I haven’t run across in my time it is some new sort just invented. | |
| Amer. Mag. 108 129/1: He wanted to know whether the ‘bunk artist’ ever can be a really good salesman. | |
| Jesus Complex 95: Preacher [...] was such a good bunk artist that father believed in his sincerity. | |
| Time 37 14: Don’t let any bunk artist come along and tell you Wendell Willkie or Wendell Willkie’s views are any different. | |
| Hoodlums (2021) 45: Martin was a bunk-artist from the word go, he thought. | |
| Roguish World of Dr Brinkley 208: [He] had called the Del Rio medico ‘the world's greatest bunk artist’. |
a fool, an incompetent.
| Day Book (Chicago) 22 Mar. 19/2: Have they got an intelligent operator at the other end of the wire or a bunkhead? |
see under sheet n.
(US) a preacher.
| ‘To a Contemporary Bunkshooter’ Chicago Poems (1994) 28: You slimy bunkshooter, you put a smut on every human blossom in reach of your rotten breath belching about hell-fire. | |
| They Call Me Carpenter 113: Gimme a chance at those bunk-shooters – I’ll shut ’em up. |
In phrases
(Aus.) to fail, to collapse.
| ‘At a Boxing Bout’ in Benno and Some of the Push 116: ‘O’Brien ’ll out ‘im this round [...Scorcher’ll go t’bunk, you take it frim the prefessor.’. |
to talk nonsense.
| New York Day by Day 25 July [synd. col.] A shirt shop with a sign: ‘We receive patrons only by appointment.’ That’s putting the sixteen pound bunk. |