wonk

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (3)  · 
"She was the policy wonk, a community activist who had won hard-fought elections for city council and controller and who had been a city official for a dozen years and who, by the way, happened to be gay."

View all »
Definitions (3)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun Slang A student who studies excessively; a grind.
  2. noun Slang One who studies an issue or a topic thoroughly or excessively: "leading a talkathon of policy wonks in a methodical effort to build consensus for his programs” (Michael Kranish).

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (1)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples

  • "She was the policy wonk, a community activist who had won hard-fought elections for city council and controller and who had been a city official for a dozen years and who, by the way, happened to be gay." —  CNN Transcript Dec 14, 2009
  • In a nutshell: A yahoo invades your life with the intentional desire to annoy you, and a wonk is a stupid sort who annoys you without realizing it. —  The Vail Trail - All Sections
  • What typifies the wonk is their utter unawareness of the world and people around them. —  The Vail Trail - All Sections
  • If he goes at her being a policy wonk, acts like he is back in the classroom I think he is able to counter the notion of you got specifics, I got specifics, let's do battle. —  CNN Transcript Feb 6, 2008
  • SNOW: They call it honky tonk meets the White House wonk -- he's the wonk. —  CNN Transcript May 16, 2007
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

Wonk has been looked up 252 times, favorited 0 times, listed 20 times, and commented on 3 times.

On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

by American Heritage

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word several times a year.

Recent Lookups

hubris · hay-loft · Mayflies · mock-up · Added

Recent Favorites

Espoo · gams · TelePalmter · Espoo · stick-to-it-iveness

Recent Pronunciations

milosrdenstvi · lichen-covered · futon · sagacity · monoragngocious