- Today's Word
Wonky
[WONG-kee]
Definition
- (adjective) Unsteady, shaky, or not functioning properly. It can also refer to ideas or policies that are overly complicated or impractical, especially in political contexts. In British English, it can mean something that is crooked or off-center.
Example
After the earthquake, the building’s structure was a bit wonky, with some walls leaning at odd angles and doors that wouldn’t close properly.
Fun Fact
The origin of “wonky” is uncertain, but it’s believed to have emerged in British English in the early 20th century. Some linguists speculate it might be related to the Dutch word “wankel,” meaning unstable or tottering. In recent years, “wonky” has taken on additional meaning in political circles, where a “policy wonk” is someone who studies a topic in great detail, often to the point of becoming an expert in very specific and technical aspects of policy.
(noun) The state of being excessively overweight; an abundance of body fat significantly beyond what is considered healthy.
The Victorian novelist described his villain with pointed corpulence — every detail of the man’s physical excess carefully deployed to signal moral failure to a readership primed to make exactly that connection.
Corpulence derives from the Latin corpulentia, meaning “fleshiness,” rooted in corpus — “body.” The same root gives us corporeal, corpse, incorporate, and corps — a family of words all built around the physical body in its various states. It entered English in the 15th century as a neutral medical descriptor before acquiring the moral weight that Victorian literature in particular loaded onto it, transforming a clinical observation into a character judgment.