Thunk

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /θʌŋk/

Definitions

1. A dull, heavy sound often caused by a blunt impact ; the past form of a verb describing the act of using one's mind to consider or reflect
2. The sound produced when something thick or heavy hits a surface ; a previous action of mental consideration or judgment
3. A low, muffled noise resulting from a solid object striking another ; an earlier instance of forming an idea or opinion

Etymology: The sound "thunk" is onomatopoeic, but its best-known sense has a deliberate, playful origin in computing. Its inventors coined it as a joke: the past tense of "think" is "thought," and "thunk" was offered as a mock irregular past tense of the same verb. The joke was aimed at ALGOL 60, a programming language whose argument types could be fixed in advance, at compile time, so that the computer did the "thinking" beforehand. The term then passed into programming jargon for a procedure that is handed a value and performs its work on it, which is where the mental-judgment sense of the word comes from. The verb and noun for the dull, heavy impact sound are simpler. The word is onomatopoeic, likely shaped by analogy with existing forms ending in "-unk," such as "drunk" and "sunk," which gave the sound a familiar, solid ending.

Synonyms: thought, idea, notion, concept, consideration