Stonking

July 20th, 2011 by admin

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9 comments on this post.

  1. Fun Word of the Day: Stonking | Cryptic Philosopher:

    March 28th, 2012 at 9:50 am

    […] second I saw this word, I knew it had to be British. Sure enough, it is: ["Stonking"] been popular slang in the UK for many years, and enjoyed a certain vogue there in the […]

  2. Ed Groves:

    July 9th, 2012 at 1:55 pm

    I have an idea that the word “stonking” was my own invention. In the early 1980s, at South Bank, I used to play some strange games with friends, one of which I named “Stonker Tennis” a variant of Tiddly-Winks involving an improvised “net”. “That’s a stonker” we cried – never having heard the word!

  3. Jessie Bauchope Young:

    September 24th, 2013 at 3:44 am

    LOL! I’ve been stonking since the fifties! It has mulitple meanings. and I suspect it ids Scotish in origin!

  4. Jessie Bauchope Young:

    September 24th, 2013 at 3:45 am

    I’ve been stonking since the fifities.

  5. PulSe:

    April 5th, 2014 at 12:03 am

    Hmmm… my heart tells me that the cry when ‘taking the pot!’ (see 1825 version) lead to the WWI ‘decimating’ usage. Seems about right – 4 generations for a child’s disparaging hoot meaning ‘suckers – took it all! the pot! – “stonk!” leading to ‘decimated the lot’.

    Just my guts memory whispering.

    (regarding ‘Boffin’ – the first image I conjure… the studios prim bird leading to the ‘egghead’ modern variant seems pretty straightforward.)

  6. PulSe:

    April 5th, 2014 at 12:05 am

    yes… studious (spellcheck!)

  7. Gardgydja:

    December 31st, 2014 at 10:00 am

    It could come from old norse. There’s a Swedish word ‘stånk’ which is pronounced ‘stonk’ and means a pot or jug.

  8. Ali Martineau:

    September 11th, 2015 at 2:14 pm

    From the early days of flying, the ‘lift’ of the plane was measured by a calibrated tube, attached to either side of the cockpit. The unit of measurement was ‘knots’, which was written vertically along side of the gauge. When read backwards, as it often was, due to the position of the pilot, the word ‘KNOTS’ was read as ”STONK. When the aircraft got a huge amount of ‘lift’, the liquid in the glass gauges went up to the top, and the pilots would then ‘boast’ that they had had a ‘STONK-ing’ good flight! Maybe this is the origin of the word ‘STONKING’ ?

  9. Bruce Hocking:

    May 24th, 2017 at 1:03 am

    I played cherrybobs and marbles at school about 1933 and then stonk had two meanings…it could be your favourite marble for firing at the marbles in the ring (usually slightly larger than average) or your “stonk” could be your “dibs” (your wager). My favourite was a black tor (a stone marble) until it was chipped by a boy with a glassie. Theree were many Scotch kids in the school so the origin could have been Scottish.

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