Skunk Works

Trademark.

1. engineering, technical, consulting, and advisory services with respect to designing, building, equipping, and testing commercial and military aircraft and related equipment at Lockheed Martin Corporation.

noun

1. (usually lowercase),  Also skunk works, skunkworks an often secret experimental laboratory or facility for producing innovative products, as in the computer or aerospace field.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Skunk Works¹

First recorded in 1943 Skunk Works for def. 1, 1965–70 Skunk Works for def. 2; after Big Barnsmell's Skonk Works, where the illicit liquor Kickapoo Joy Juice was made, in Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner

Example Sentences

The high desert city also is home to Lockheed Martin’s famed “Skunk Works,” a secretive cutting edge military research and development facilty.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Framery Labs, a skunk works inside the company that dreams up new projects, at first thought to track how much employees laugh during meetings, but then decided to go a step further and put pressure-sensitive foil into the pod’s seat.

Read more on Seattle Times

For most of the recent past, electric cars were relegated to the fringes of the automotive industry, the domain of fuel-crisis tinkerers, retrofitters and automaker skunk works departments.

Read more on Washington Post

First and foremost, this is a nostalgia play Harley’s new company sprung out of the company’s skunk works Product Development Center, where a small group of “passionate motorcycle and bicycle enthusiasts” have been working on designing and developing an e-bike “worthy of the Harley-Davidson name,” Harley says.

Read more on The Verge

Instead, Johnson and other engineers from Lockheed’s Skunk Works engineering division built the U-2 big—63 feet long, with a 105-foot wingspan—and also powerful, allowing it to support the bulky, electricity-hungry cameras, radios and vacuum tubes of the day.

Read more on Scientific American