Green’s Dictionary of Slang

funk v.1

[funk n.1 ]

1. to smoke a pipe.

[UK]N. Ward ‘A Trip to New England’ in Writings (1704) 180: As bad as the Bowl of a Sailors Pipe, which he has Funk’d in, without Burning.
W. Dunkin Parson’s Revels (2010) 88: But Oaf could soke, as well as funk.
[UK]E. Chicken Collier’s Wedding 12: For she would funk, smoke, fart, and drink.
[UK]Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 98: Then Greece and Troy, in any weather, / May smoke a sober pipe together / May soberly both drink and funk.
[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[UK]Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) II 54: A round dozen pipes they funk.
[UK]G. Andrewes Dict. Sl. and Cant.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum.
[UK]Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[UK]G. Kent Modern Flash Dict.
[UK]Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.

2. to make a stench.

[UK]N. Ward Auction n.p.: The Cook-Room of a West-Country bargee where the old Dons sate Funking their Noses.
[UK]N. Ward ‘Battel without Bloodshed’ in Writings (1704) 125: Then out come Tobacco-Box, Flint, Steel and Tinder, / With nasty foul Pipes, scrace the length of my Finger, / Then each with his own Rank and Quality Hers, / So to Funking of Noses, and Singeing of Beards.
[UK]N. Ward Compleat and Humorous Account of Remarkable Clubs (1756) 289: Thus they Funk’d and Prattled, being continually mindful of the main Chance.
[UK]Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 417: How can you [...] snore and crack, and sleep so sound; / Whilst all your Comrades, tho’ they’ve drunk so, / Can’t get a wink of sleep they funk so.
[UK]Morn. Post 26 June 2/3: One would have thought that while he was fuming and funking under this trial for libel [...] he would have [...] abstained from slander, defamation and libel.
[UK] ‘Midnight Mishaps’ in Bentley’s Misc. Aug. 203: Never in all my born life borrowed on a friend that the beggar didn’t funk pious and grunt gospel.
[Aus]Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 8 Apr. 3/3: Why does old Goliah [...] perambulate the streets so very early in the morning? [...] Why, the old woman funks him out of bed.
[UK]Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.
[UK]London Life 7 June 4/1: [S]ome of my fellow passengers will insist upon funking out the carriage with bad tobacco.
[UK]R. Whiteing No. 5 John Street 43: Funks the place out sometimes.

3. to blow smoke on someone.

[UK]W.T. Moncrieff Tom and Jerry II i: tom: But, I say, only see how confoundedly the dustman’s getting hold of Logic, – we’ll funk him. (Tom and Jerry smoke Logic). logic: Oh, hang your cigars, I don’t like it; let’s have no funking.
[UK] ‘The Spectre of Tappington’ in Bentley’s Misc. Feb. 203: An arrangement happily adapted for the escape of the noxious fumes up the chimney, without that unmerciful ‘funking’ each other.
[UK]Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open.

In phrases

funk the cobbler (v.) [the trick was apparently first performed by blowing the foul fumes into the cracks in a cobbler’s stall]

(UK juv.) to ‘smoke out’ a schoolmate, usu. with asafoetida; cite 1844 refers to the use of presumably smoky fireworks.

[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: To funk the cobler; a schoolboy’s trick, performed with assafoettida and cotton, which are stuffed into a pipe: the cotton being lighted, and the bowl of the pipe covered with a coarse handkerchief, the smoke is blown out at the small end, through the crannies of a cobler’s stall.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
[UK]Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[UK]Morn. Post (London) 13 Sept. n.p.: Thus armed [with squibs] the urchins amused themselves with the old-fashioned game called ‘funk the cobbler’ much to the annoyance of the locality. It frequently happened that a flaming missile would find its way through some parlour window.
[UK]Hotten Sl. Dict.
[UK]Sl. Dict.
funk up (v.)

(US black) fig. or lit. to ‘stink out’, to make a smell.

[US]‘Iceberg Slim’ Pimp 220: These bottom broads, when they started to rot really funked up a stud’s skull.