zonky

English

Etymology

zonk +‎ -y

Pronunciation

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Adjective

zonky (comparative more zonky, superlative most zonky)

1. (slang) Very fatigued; zonked.
   • 2005, Susan K. Lorenz, Choose a Miracle, page 93:

     And I feel kind of zonky this morning. Maybe I needed the sleep.

   • 2011, P. J. Hoge, Z: Fourth in the Prairie Preacher Series, page 151:

     She was much better before the medicine made her all zonky.

2. (slang) Weird, odd, eccentric.
   • 1965 June 27, Kurt Vonnegut, “Infarcted! Tabescent!”, in The New York Times:

     He knows all the stuff that Arthur Schlesinger Jr., knows, keeps picking up brand new, ultra-contemporary stuff that nobody else knows, and arrives at zonky conclusions couched in scholarly terms.

   • 1977, Pauline Kael, “Drip-Dry Comedy”, in When the Lights Go Down‎^[2], New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, published 1980, page 361:

     […] she doesn’t have the precision of a Jean Arthur, yet she has some of that rueful, fluffy-in-the-head charm of someone whose brains are addled by her sexual impulses, and she adds the blur in the expression and those tremulous, zonky eyes.

   • 1979, Bernard Malamud, chapter 1, in Dubin’s Lives‎^[3], New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, page 22:

     “I tried the State Employment Office and all the guy there does is show you unemployment figures for the county and shakes his head. Makes you feel zonky.”

   • 2005, Michael Cunningham, “Like Beauty”, in Specimen Days‎^[4], New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 242:

     Gradually Simon’s powers of movement returned. He felt them coming back. It was a growing warmth, an inner blooming. He was able to say, “Guess I went a little zonky back there, huh?”