adjective
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thick and short
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consisting of or containing thick pieces
chunky dog food
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(of clothes, esp knitwear) made of thick bulky material
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of chunky
Explanation
Something that's full of little lumps and bits is chunky. Some people are crazy about chunky peanut butter, while others prefer it to be smooth and creamy. Some kinds of soup are chunky, with hunks of potato and pieces of broccoli, and you can also make a chunky spaghetti sauce that's full of tomato bits. When a person is described as chunky, it means they're dense and thick-bodied, and sometimes quite muscular. Chunky is an American English word, from the sense of chunk as "a thick piece of something,"
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Here, you can sit down at a chunky late-’90s computer and explore the original site yourself.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2026
At Huxley-Parlour, SaraNoa Mark’s chunky cast-glass sculptures look like fragments of artifacts from an ancient alien civilization.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
“U.S. shoppers are seemingly turning back to bold — big gold pieces, chunky chains, big colored gemstone pieces and cocktail rings, that kind of thing,” she said over email.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 15, 2026
Across the top, in chunky yellow letters, it reads “Phodega.”
From Salon ● Aug. 20, 2026
Last summer my mom and I spruced up the old cupboards with a coat of high-gloss white and threw down some chunky black and white checked linoleum.
From "Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet" by Joanne Proulx
Did “Étoile” scripts feel any bigger or chunkier than “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” or “Gilmore Girls”?
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2025
The stitches are bigger, so chunkier yarn is used, and this means blankets can be knitted more quickly than in traditional knitting.
From BBC ● Apr. 18, 2024
From others it seems an elegant high-tech cousin of the Transamerica Pyramid, the chunkier building across the bay.
From New York Times ● Jun. 9, 2023
If you didn’t smash the beans at all, the soup would be good, it would just be thinner and chunkier.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 22, 2023
His height at the shoulder was five feet ten inches; and his build was even chunkier than the usual solid robust pattern of buffaloes.
From The Land of Footprints by Stewart Edward White
Silicon Valley is where the chunkiest share awards tend to be, so it’s possible the strong performance of almost anything tech-related has outweighed their ill effects so far.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
In addition to widespread furloughs and service disruptions, a federal government shutdown could affect the tournament for the chunkiest bears of Alaska’s Katmai National Park.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 11, 2023
Cut a slice and cozy up under your chunkiest throw blanket.
From Salon ● Oct. 15, 2022
Its flat display is 49mm across, making it by far the chunkiest Apple Watch.
From The Verge ● Sep. 8, 2022
And Boris Johnson has used this occasion to make big changes to the cabinet - the most significant switch coming in one of the chunkiest jobs of all.
From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2021
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
