chunk

• IPA^(key): /t͡ʃʌŋk/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌŋk

Variant of chuck; or alternatively a diminutive of chump (“chunk; block”) +‎ *-k (diminutive suffix) (compare hunk from hump, etc.).

chunk (plural chunks)

1. A part of something that has been separated; a generally squat, thick, irregular piece of something, e.g. wood or stone.

   Synonyms: bit, hunk, lump; see also Thesaurus:piece

   The statue broke into chunks.

   a chunk of granite

   • 1910, Jack London, Burning Daylight:

     Daylight, between mouthfuls, fed chunks of ice into the tin pot, where it thawed into water. ... Daylight cut up generous chunks of bacon and dropped them in the pot of bubbling beans.

   • 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 224, about Hertingfordbury:

     Until the main road from Hatfield to Hertford was diverted a few years ago, heavy lorries trundling through the village sometimes knocked chunks off corner buildings, but now the village has regained much of its former tranquillity.

   1. A large or substantial portion of something.
      • 2013 February 26, Maryellen Weimer, Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 91:

        I'd be willing to bet a chunk of my retirement that the number hasn't decreased.

      • 2015 December 6, Eva Hudson, Shoot First, Two Pies Press:

        […] she'd be willing to bet a chunk of change this would be one of the nicest rooms Kate-Lynn Bowers had ever slept in: it was the sort of place you'd think twice about running away from.

2. (linguistics, education) A sequence of two or more words that occur in language with high frequency but are not idiomatic; a bundle or cluster.

   examples of chunks would include "in accordance with", "the results of", and "so far"

3. (computing) A discrete segment of a file, stream, etc. (especially one that represents audiovisual media); a block.
   • 1994, Paul J Perry, Multimedia developer's guide:

     The first DWORD of a chunk data in the RIFF chunk is a four character code value identifying the form type of the file.

4. (comedy) A segment of a comedian's performance.
   • 1994, Gene Perret, Successful Stand-up Comedy: Advice from a Comedy Writer, page 80:

     You begin gathering two hours of dependable comedy by developing that first three-minute chunk. When you're satisfied with it, you create another three minutes of laughs, then another three minutes.

   • 2012, Jay Sankey, Zen and the Art of Stand-Up Comedy, page 168:

     If you're gigging outdoors for the Society of Catholic Gardeners, don't close your set with your "Papa Beelzebub" chunk (no matter how life affirming you think it is!).

• “chunk”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “chunk”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

chunk (third-person singular simple present chunks, present participle chunking, simple past and past participle chunked)

1. (transitive) To break into large pieces or chunks.
2. (transitive) To break down (language, etc.) into conceptual pieces of manageable size.
   • 2005, Yong Zhao, Research in Technology and Second Language Education:

     These results offer tentative evidence that suggests that certain components of computer-mediated instruction (in this case, access to and control over syntactically chunked, captioned video) are not necessarily beneficial for certain learners […]

3. (transitive, slang, chiefly Southern US) To throw.

   Synonyms: chuck, fling, hurl; see also Thesaurus:throw

4. (transitive, video games) Deal a substantial amount of damage to an opponent.

   He's chunked right before the next battle so he has to regen HP.

chunk (plural chunks)

1. Archaic form of chank (“type of spiral shell”).