Hunk

A big, good-looking, well-built man: muscle and appeal together, the rugged leading-man type.

A hunk is a big, good-looking, well-built man: broad shoulders, solid chest, a jaw you could crack walnuts on. The word is about bulk and appeal together. A skinny pretty boy is not a hunk, and neither is a huge guy nobody wants to look at twice. Green's Dictionary of Slang defines it as "an attractive, rugged, well-built man", and adds, a little cruelly, "possibly somewhat unintelligent".

It is one of the few words in this dictionary that everyone uses, straight women included. Among gay men it sits next to muscle, stud and jock, a general compliment that does not ask about your tribe, your role or your gym routine, only about the overall effect.

Where it comes from

In 19th-century American dialect a hunk was simply a big lump of something, bulk, a large body. Applied to a man, it seems to have been coined for one person: the film star Victor Mature. Green's traces it to Sheilah Graham's syndicated gossip column, which in 1941 called him a "beautiful hunk of a man", and a Baltimore paper repeated the line in 1942. The phrase stuck to Hollywood leading men, and by 1957 a novel could ask "Isn't Gregory Peck the sweetest hunk of a man?". By the 1980s the "of a man" had fallen away and a hunk was just a hunk.

The adjective came along with it. Hunky, "good-looking, well-built", is how you describe the man rather than name him, and hunking, "large, attractively well-built", is a rarer cousin.

How it is used today

Hunk is warm, a bit old-fashioned and a bit camp, which is part of its charm. It belongs to calendar covers, romance novels and the way your aunt talks about firemen. Gay men use it with a wink: calling a man a hunk is admiring him and gently teasing the whole idea of admiring him.

On the apps it mostly turns up in bios ("hunks only, no drama") and in porn titles, where it promises a solid, muscular, usually masculine performer. The near words split the territory: a himbo is a hunk with nothing upstairs, a twunk is a hunk still close to twink age and build, and a muscle bear is a hunk with fur and a beard.

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