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hulk

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Pronunciation

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English hulke,[2][3][4] inherited from Old English hulc (“light, fast ship”),[5][6][7][2] which glosses Latin liburna, a light sailing vessel.[8][5][7] The OED calls it a word of early diffusion among the seafaring peoples of Western Europe, of uncertain origin:[8][5] it matches Medieval Latin hulcus and hulca, Old French hulque, Middle Dutch hulc, Middle Low German hulk and Old High German holcho.[8][3][9] Barnhart and Etymonline take it as probably from Old Dutch hulke and the Medieval Latin word,[6][5] and the Oxford dictionaries think the Middle English word was probably reinforced by Middle Low German and Middle Dutch.[9][10][11] It has been referred, conjecturally, to Ancient Greek ὁλκάς (holkás, “a ship that is towed, merchantman”),[8][5][12][3] from ἕλκω (hélkō, “to pull, drag”),[5][6][13] from Proto-Indo-European *selk- (“to pull, draw”),[5][6] and the Oxford dictionaries call it probably of Mediterranean origin;[10][9][14] Weekley thought the Greek source very doubtful, since the word was widespread so early in West Germanic.[15]

Earliest recorded meaning

A ship: in an Old English glossary it translates Latin liburna, a light, fast vessel,[8][7] and it appears in the Latin laws of Æthelred.[8][7] Barnhart dates the Old English word to about 1050.[6]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English a hulk was usually a large, heavy ship of burden,[8][5][7] and Barnhart records the sense "trading ship, warship" from 1338.[6] Geoffrey Callender, quoted by Etymonline, explains that the hulk was the big merchantman of the northern nations in the 16th century, and that as she became obsolete her name was used in derision for any crank vessel.[5] From 1671, in Dryden, it meant the body of a worn-out ship kept afloat as a storehouse or for housing crews,[8][6][14] and since 1797 such a ship used as a prison, usually as the hulks, as in Great Expectations.[8][5] From 1632 to 1829 it could also mean simply the hull of a ship.[8] The figurative sense "big, unwieldy person" is recorded before 1400,[6][5] with surnames such as Hulkebon (1316) and Stephen le Hulke in the early 14th century;[6][5] the OED's first quotation is from Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2 (1600).[8] A bulky mass of anything followed in 1818.[8] The verb, to act or hang about clumsily, appears about 1793, and "to rise up massively" in 1880;[8][6][5] the adjective hulking dates from 1698.[6] Green's dictionary notes that the sense of a big, heavy person was popularized by the comic-book character the Incredible Hulk, created in 1962 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.[16]

Timeline

  • c. 1050 – Old English hulc, a light, fast ship.[6][7]
  • 1338 – a trading ship or warship.[6]
  • before 1400 – a big, clumsy person.[6][5]
  • 1632 – the hull of a ship (obsolete after 1829).[8]
  • 1671 – the body of a dismantled ship used as a storehouse.[8][6]
  • 1698 – hulking, big and clumsy.[6]
  • c. 1793 – verb, to hang about or move clumsily.[8][6]
  • 1797 – an old ship used as a prison.[8]
  • 1818 – a bulky mass.[8]
  • 1880 – verb, to rise up massively.[8][5]

Modern meaning

Noun

  1. The body of an old, abandoned or dismantled ship: Rusting hulks lined the estuary.
  2. (historical) An old ship used as a storehouse or, in 19th-century Britain, as a prison.
  3. A large, unwieldy ship.
  4. A big, heavy, clumsy person.
  5. Any large, bulky thing or mass: the burnt-out hulk of a bus.

Verb

  1. To move heavily or clumsily.
  2. To appear very large; to loom.

Word family

  • hulky
  • hulking

Usage notes

Several other words share the spelling.[8][17] An obsolete or dialect hulk, a hut or hovel and later a husk, was hulc (“hut”), probably a diminutive from the stem of helan (“to cover”), and related to hull;[8][9][7] the English Dialect Dictionary records it in Northumberland, Northamptonshire, Somerset and Devon as a temporary shelter for a shepherd in the lambing season.[17] Another hulk, to disembowel a hare or rabbit, is a variant of holk,[8][2][17] and in mining it meant to remove the softer part of a lode before blasting (1881).[8] In Scotland, Ireland and England hulk was also used for skulking about as though too lazy to work.[17]

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  3. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  4. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  7. ^ a b c d e f g Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  11. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  12. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  13. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  14. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  15. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  16. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  17. ^ a b c d Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)