1 Answer

funk 1 |f?NGk| informal
noun
1 (also blue funk ) [ in sing. ] a state of depression: I sat absorbed in my own blue funk.
• chiefly Brit.a state of great fear or panic: are you in a blue funk about running out of things to say?
2 dated, chiefly Brit.a coward.
verb [ with obj. ] chiefly Brit.
avoid (a task or thing) out of fear: I could have seen him this morning but I funked it .
ORIGIN mid 18th cent. (first recorded as slang at Oxford University in Oxford, England): perhaps from funk2 in the slang sense ‘tobacco smoke,’ or from obsolete Flemish fonck ‘disturbance, agitation.’
funk 2 |f??k|
noun
1 a style of popular dance music of US black origin, based on elements of blues and soul and having a strong rhythm that typically accentuates the first beat in the bar.
2 [ in sing. ] informal, dated a strong musty smell of sweat or tobacco.
PHRASAL VERBS
funk something up give music elements of such a style.
ORIGIN early 17th cent. (in the sense ‘musty smell’): perhaps from French dialect funkier ‘blow smoke on,’ based on Latin fumus ‘smoke.’
Funk, Casimir |fo?oNGk, f?NGk|
(1884–1967), US biochemist; born in Poland. He showed that a number of diseases, including scurvy, rickets, beriberi, and pellagra, were each caused by the deficiency of a particular dietary component. He coined the term vitamins for the chemicals concerned.