BONK

verb and noun (People and Society) transitive or intransitive verb: In young people's slang, to have sex with (someone); to copulate. noun: An act of sex. Etymology: Bonk originally meant 'to hit resoundingly' and the corresponding noun was an onomatopoeic word for the abrupt thud that is heard when something hard hits a solid object (such as the head); it was used fairly typically in the school-playground joke 'What goes ninety-nine bonk?'--'A centipede with a wooden leg', which has been told for at least half a century. The transition from 'to hit resoundingly' to the present use was made by way of an intransitive sense 'to make a bonking noise, to thud'. The slang use has parallels in the bang of gang-bang and in the American slang equivalent boff (noun and verb). A less likely theory is that it is backslang for knob, also a vulgar slang way of saying 'have sex'. History and Usage: This sense of bonk, which is really a humorous euphemism, has apparently been in spoken use among young people (especially, it seems, at a number of public schools) since the fifties and first appeared in print in the seventies. Although middle-class slang, it is coarse enough not to have been used in print at all frequently until the middle of the eighties. Then it was brought into vogue by journalists unable to resist the pun with bonk as the onomatopoeic word for the sound a tennis ball makes in contact with the racquet: in the 1987 season, the defending Wimbledon champion Boris Becker was giving disappointing performances, something which the tabloids put down to too much bonking. This episode was followed by much journalistic speculation about the origin of the word (including a street interview on the consumer programme That's Life) and considerably increased use of it in print, often with heavy innuendo. As is often the case with words taken up by the media in this way, interest in it died down within a short time, but by then it had acquired a respectability that allowed it to be used even in the quality newspapers. The corresponding action noun is bonking; agent noun bonker. The Fleet Street rags had their angle after the Doohan victory: BONKED OUT; TOO MUCH SEX BEATS BIG BORIS. Sports Illustrated 6 July 1987, p. 21 Flaubert bonked his way round the Levant, his sense of sexual adventure unquenched by the prospect, soon realised, of catching unpleasant diseases. Independent 28 May 1988, p. 17 Police took away...a 'little black' book containing the names of thousands of women with whom the legendary Belgian bonker is said to have had steamy love romps. Private Eye 15 Sept. 1989, p. 23