zonky

zonky

English

Etymology

zonk +‎ -y

Pronunciation

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Adjective

zonky (comparative more zonky, superlative most zonky)

1. (slang) Very fatigued; zonked.
   • 2005, Susan K. Lorenz, Choose a Miracle (page 93)

     And I feel kind of zonky this morning. Maybe I needed the sleep.

   • 2011, P. J. Hoge, Z: Fourth in the Prairie Preacher Series (page 151)

     She was much better before the medicine made her all zonky.

2. (slang) Weird, odd, eccentric.[1]
   • 1965, Kurt Vonnegut, “Infarcted! Tabescent!” The New York Times, 27 June, 1965,

     He knows all the stuff that Arthur Schlesinger Jr., knows, keeps picking up brand new, ultra-contemporary stuff that nobody else knows, and arrives at zonky conclusions couched in scholarly terms.

   • 1977, Pauline Kael, “Drip-Dry Comedy” in When the Lights Go Down, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980, p. 361,

     […] she doesn’t have the precision of a Jean Arthur, yet she has some of that rueful, fluffy-in-the-head charm of someone whose brains are addled by her sexual impulses, and she adds the blur in the expression and those tremulous, zonky eyes.

   • 1979, Bernard Malamud, Dubin’s Lives, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, Chapter One, p. 22,

     “I tried the State Employment Office and all the guy there does is show you unemployment figures for the county and shakes his head. Makes you feel zonky.”

   • 2005, Michael Cunningham, Specimen Days, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “Like Beauty,” p. 242,

     Gradually Simon’s powers of movement returned. He felt them coming back. It was a growing warmth, an inner blooming. He was able to say, “Guess I went a little zonky back there, huh?”

References

1. John Ayto, The Oxford Dictionary of Slang, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 427,