Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A heavy, unwieldy ship.
  • noun The hull of an old, unseaworthy, or wrecked ship.
  • noun An old or unseaworthy ship used as a prison or warehouse.
  • noun One, such as a person or object, that is bulky, clumsy, or unwieldy.
  • noun A wrecked or abandoned shell of a usually large object, such as a building or vehicle.
  • intransitive verb To appear as a massive or towering form; loom.
  • intransitive verb To move clumsily.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A hut.
  • noun A pigsty or a cattle-pen.
  • To take out the entrails of: as, to hulk a hare.
  • In mining, to take down or remove, as the softer part of a lode, before removing the harder part. See gouge, n., 5.
  • noun A ship, particularly a heavy ship.
  • noun Anything bulky or unwieldy; a large unwieldy person.
  • noun The body of a ship or decked vessel of any kind; particularly, the body of an old ship or vessel which is laid up as unfit for sea-service, or a dismasted wreck.
  • noun A hull or husk.
  • noun The holly.
  • noun In mining: The removal of the gouge or soft part from the side of the lode before breaking any part of the hard metalliferous portion of it down.
  • noun The excavation made by this operation.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb rare To take out the entrails of; to disembowel.
  • noun The body of a ship or decked vessel of any kind; esp., the body of an old vessel laid by as unfit for service.
  • noun A heavy ship of clumsy build.
  • noun Anything bulky or unwieldly.
  • noun an old ship fitted with an apparatus to fix or take out the masts of a ship.
  • noun [Eng.] old or dismasted ships, formerly used as prisons.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To remove the entrails of; to disembowel.
  • noun a non-functional, but floating ship, usually stripped of rigging and equipment, and often put to other uses such as storage or accommodation.
  • noun archaic any large ship that is difficult to maneuver
  • noun A big, (and possibly clumsy) person
  • noun bodybuilding : An excessively muscled person

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a ship that has been wrecked and abandoned
  • verb appear very large or occupy a commanding position
  • noun a very large person; impressive in size or qualities

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English hulc, from Medieval Latin hulcus, probably from Greek holkas, ship that is towed, merchant ship, from holkos, machine for hauling ships, from helkein, to pull.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Compare Middle Low German holken to hollow out, and similar Swedish word.

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