From earlier meaning "old refuse from boats and ships", fromMiddle Englishjunk,jounke,jonk,joynk(“an old cable or rope”,nautical term), sometimes cut into bits and used as caulking; of uncertain origin; perhaps related tojoin,joint,juncture. Often compared toMiddle Englishjunk,jonk,jonke,junck(“a rush; basket made of rushes”), fromOld Frenchjonc, fromLatiniuncus(“rush, reed”); however, theOxford English Dictionary finds "no evidence of connexion".
In America alone, people spent $170 billion on “direct marketing”—junk mail of both the physical and electronic varieties—last year. Yet of those who received unsolicited adverts through the post, only 3% bought anything as a result.
The poor fellow took so muchjunk into his system he could only weather the greater proportion of his day in that chair with the lamp burning at noon, but in the morning he was magnificent.
Trace a line of goose pimples up the thin young arm. Slide the needle in and push the bulb watching thejunk hit him all over. Move right in with the shit and suckjunk through all the hungry young cells.
I'm talking about everybody getting crunk, crunk / Boys tryin' to touch myjunk, junk / Gonna smack him if he getting too drunk, drunk
2019 April 18, Genny Glassman, “Parent Torn After Discovering 5-Year-Old Neighbor 'Flashed' Kids & Told Them to Keep It a Secret”, inCafeMom[2]:
But what to do about a kid who flashes his privates at your child? And worse, how do you make sure your kid does not reciprocate? That's exactly the dilemma one mom faced when she learned that her 5-year-old neighbor had flashed his "junk" at her two sons and then made them swear not to tell.
1848, [James Russell Lowell], “(please specify the page)”, in Homer Wilbur[pseudonym], editor,Melibœus-Hipponax. The Biglow Papers,[…], Cambridge, Mass.: George Nichols,→OCLC:
Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his, An' gives a good-sizedjunk to all
Then he lay quiet for a little, and then, pulling out a stick of tobacco, begged me to cut him a quid. “Cut me ajunk o’ that,” says he, “for I haven’t no knife and hardly strength enough, so be as I had.[…]”
(On Facebook, a record collector wrote:) "The newest addition to my Annette Hanshaw collection, Ijunked this beautiful flawless E-copy within walking distance from my house."
The reduced forms with an apostrophe areenclitic; they immediately follow verbs or conjunctions.Dü is deleted altogether in such contexts.
Et is not enclitic and can stand in any unstressed position; the full subject formhat is now rarely used. Inreflexive use, only full object forms occur.
The dual forms are dated, but not obsolete as in other dialects.
Independent possessives are distinguished from attributive ones only with plural referents.
, Oxford:Oxford University Press, September 2024.