HUNK NOUN (PEOPLE AND SOCIETY)

In media and young people's slang: a sexually attractive, ruggedly masculine young man; a male pin-up. Etymology: A figurative sense development of the noun hunk, literally 'a large piece cut off from something (especially food)'; in this case, the development arises from an assessment of the man in question entirely from the point of view of physique (as though he were a piece of meat), in response to the plethora of such words used by men about women. An earlier slang sense was 'a large (and clumsy or unattractive) person', but this sense is now normally covered by hulk. History and Usage: First used by jazz musicians in the forties and popular with college students in the US in the late sixties, hunk had spread to various other parts of the English-speaking world (including the UK, Australia, and South Africa) by the end of the seventies. During the eighties it enjoyed a fashion among tabloid journalists, along with the adjectives hunky and hunksome. Jumping on the hunk of the month bandwagon is photographer Herb Klein with a 1985 calendar that gives you a different man every month. Fair Lady (South Africa) 26 Dec. 1984, p. 11 Michael Patton pranced his hunky bod around. Village Voice (New York) 30 Jan. 1990, p. 83 Girl fans will be seeing more of the hunk...in the top...soap. News of the World 11 Feb. 1990, p. 5