hunch
Americanverb (used with object)
-
to thrust out or up in a hump; arch.
to hunch one's back.
-
to shove, push, or jostle.
verb (used without object)
-
to thrust oneself forward jerkily; lunge forward.
-
to stand, sit, or walk in a bent posture.
noun
-
a premonition or suspicion; guess.
I have a hunch he'll run for reelection.
- Synonyms:
- conjecture, theory, feeling, surmise
-
a hump.
-
a push or shove.
-
a lump or thick piece.
noun
-
an intuitive guess or feeling
-
another word for hump
-
a lump or large piece
verb
-
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
-
hunchsimple
-
hunchessimple
-
have hunchedperfect
-
has hunchedperfect
-
are hunchingprogressive
-
am hunchingprogressive
-
is hunchingprogressive
-
have been hunchingperfect progressive
-
has been hunchingperfect progressive
Past
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hunchedsimple
-
had hunchedperfect
-
was hunchingprogressive
-
were hunchingprogressive
-
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.
Hunch here is, some USC athletes will be seeing bigger checks very, very soon.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 21, 2024
For the next three days, it turned on the heat a little too early, and I had to go into the thermostat settings in the app to tell Alexa its Hunch was wrong.
From The Verge • Nov. 19, 2021
“I think, in general, our guys believe they should win today,” Hunch said.
From Seattle Times • Oct. 3, 2021
Trashing the Reading results, Hunch CEO Chris Dixon tweeted, “The point of the Turing Test is that you pass it when you've built machines that can fully simulate human thinking.”
From Slate • Jun. 10, 2014
No king ever received homage more gracefully than Hunch.
From Belford's Magazine, Vol 2, December 1888 by Various
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.
