awk

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɔːk/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ɔːk/
• (US, cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /ɑːk/
• Rhymes: -ɔːk, -ɑːk
• Homophone: auk

Etymology 1

From Middle English [Term?], from Old Norse ǫfugr, ǫfigr, afigr (“turned backwards”) (whence Danish avet (“backwards”), Swedish avig (“turned backwards”)), from Proto-Germanic *abuhaz. Cognate with German äbich, Gothic 𐌹𐌱𐌿𐌺𐍃 (ibuks, “turned back”). Akin to Sanskrit अपाच् (apāc, “turned away”). 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.
   • 1567, Arthur Golding, Metamorphoses:

     the awk end of hir charmed rod

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; [and] 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 […]

4. (US slang, of a situation) Awkward; uncomfortable.

Derived terms

• awkly
• awkness
• awkward

Adverb

awk (comparative more awk, superlative most awk)

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

Etymology 2

From the initial letters of the surnames of its authors: Alfred Aho, Peter 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

• “awk”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• Kaw, Kwa, kaw