awk

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word awk. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word awk, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say awk in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word awk you have here. The definition of the word awk will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofawk, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.

English

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

From Middle English awke, from Old Norse ǫfugr, ǫfigr, afigr (“turned backwards”) (whence Danish avet (“backwards”), Swedish avig (“turned backwards”)), from Proto-Germanic *abuhaz.[1] Cognate with German äbich, Gothic 𐌹𐌱𐌿𐌺𐍃 (ibuks, “turned back”).[2] Akin to Sanskrit अपाच् (apāc, “turned away”).[3] Compare dialectal Danish ave (“to turn”), Dutch averechts (“opposite, backwards, contrary”), Icelandic öfga (“to reverse”).

Adjective

awk (comparative more awk, superlative most awk)

  1. (obsolete) Odd; out of order; perverse.
  2. (obsolete) Wrong, or not commonly used; clumsy; sinister.
  3. (obsolete, UK, dialect) Clumsy in performance or manners; not dexterous; awkward.
    Synonym: unhandy
    • 1815 Sir Egerton Brydges, Archaica: Harvey's Four letters, and sonnets, touching Robert Greene; Pierce's supererogation; New letter of notable contents. Brathwaite's Essays upon the five senses, From the private press of Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, printed by T. Davison, p142
      whose wild and madbrain humour nothing fitteth so just, as the stalest dudgen or absurdest balductum, that they or their mates can invent in odd and awk speeches
  5. (US, slang, of a situation) Awkward; uncomfortable.
Derived terms

Adverb

awk (comparative more awk, superlative most awk)

  1. (obsolete) Perversely; in the wrong way.

Etymology 2

Logo

From the initial letters of the surnames of its authors: Alfred Aho, Peter J. Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan.

Proper noun

awk

  1. (computer languages) A Unix scripting language for text processing, or the command line interface itself.
    I used C, Perl, the Bourne shell, and some awk and tcl to implement these projects.
    • 2002, Æleen Frisch, Essential System Administration: Tools and Techniques for Linux and Unix Administration, 3rd edition, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 77:
      One thing awk is good for is picking out and possibly rearranging columns within command output.

References

  1. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “awkward”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
  2. ^ Germanic cognates in Deutsches Wörterbuch
  3. ^ “awk”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Further reading

Anagrams

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia