hunch
Americanverb (used with object)
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to thrust out or up in a hump; arch.
to hunch one's back.
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to shove, push, or jostle.
verb (used without object)
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to thrust oneself forward jerkily; lunge forward.
-
to stand, sit, or walk in a bent posture.
noun
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a premonition or suspicion; guess.
I have a hunch he'll run for reelection.
- Synonyms:
- conjecture, theory, feeling, surmise
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a hump.
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a push or shove.
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a lump or thick piece.
noun
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an intuitive guess or feeling
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another word for hump
-
a lump or large piece
verb
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to bend or draw (oneself or a part of the body) up or together
-
to sit in a hunched position
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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hunchsimple
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hunchessimple
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have hunchedperfect
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has hunchedperfect
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am hunchingprogressive
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are hunchingprogressive
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is hunchingprogressive
-
have been hunchingperfect progressive
-
has been hunchingperfect progressive
Past
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hunchedsimple
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had hunchedperfect
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was hunchingprogressive
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were hunchingprogressive
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had been hunchingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of hunch
1590–1600; 1900–05 hunch for def. 5; apparently variant of obsolete hinch to push, shove, kick < ?
Explanation
When you pose for pictures with short friends, you hunch over so you don't tower above them — you scrunch up your shoulders, bend your knees, and try to look smaller. You can also have a hunch, which has nothing to do with scrunching. When you have a hunch about something, you think it might be true. Your dog bolts over the fence, and you have a hunch he's heading for the neighbor who feeds him pâté. Hunch is an odd word of unknown origin, which seems to have originally meant "to push or shove" — to nudge.
Vocabulary lists containing hunch
Mockingbird
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Because of Winn-Dixie
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"A Village After Dark" by Kazuo Ishiguro
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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.
“We’re here on what I would call a hunch or, at best, a suspicion,” said Brian Perkins, an attorney representing multiple victims in the case.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 26, 2026
Hartnett suspects the oversold and the overbought may start to reverse respective directions if his hunch is correct that there’s a cyclical upswing in the U.S. economy looming.
From MarketWatch • May 1, 2026
And so the striker's hunch proved correct - he did have a role to play.
From BBC • Mar. 24, 2026
She confirmed her hunch by tracking the recent and 10-year performance of FedEx shares.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 8, 2026
However, I have a stronger hunch that the greatest part of the important biomedical research waiting to be done is in the class of basic science.
From "The Lives of a Cell" by Lewis Thomas
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.
