bunker Synonyms & Antonyms

Bunker in a Sentence

The military built a bunker to help evacuate the citizens safely from the bombings.

The vessel is taking on bunkers.

There used to be a coal bunker at the back of the house - it was demolished years ago.

Word Forms & Grammar

bunker

bunkers

bun·kered

bun·ker·ing

bunkered

bunkering

Bunker

Ellsworth Bunker

Ellsworth F. Bunker

bunker (plural bunkers)

bunker (third-person singular simple present bunkers, present participle bunkering, simple past and past participle bunkered)

Words That Rhyme With Bunker

Origin of Bunker

Origin 1: Scots bonker chest, box

Origin 2: The origin of the noun is uncertain;[1] the earliest sense is sense 7.1 (“box or chest, the lid of which serves as a seat”), from Scots bunker (“bench; pew; window-seat; sand pit (especially in golf); coal receptacle; sleeping berth, bunk”), from Early Scots bunker, bunkur, bonker (“a chest or box, often serving as a seat”), probably from Old Norse bunki (“a heap”) (probably whence bunk (“sleeping berth in a ship, train, etc.”)),[2][3] from Proto-Germanic *bunkô (“a heap, pile; a bump, lump, a crowd”), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *bʰenǵʰ- (“thick”) or *bʰeg- (“to billow, swell; to arch, bend, curve (?)”). Compare Middle Low German bunge (“drum, container”), Middle High German bunge (“drum”). Sense 1 (“hardened shelter designed to protect the inhabitants from falling bombs or other attacks”) was derived from German Bunker during World War II, which was itself from bunker (“large bin or container for storing coal”) (sense 6).

Origin 3: The verb is derived from the noun.[4]

Origin 4: From bunk (“to fail to attend school or work without permission, to play truant”) +‎ -er (suffix forming agent nouns indicating a person or thing that does an action).

Origin 5: Clipping of mossbunker,[5] a variant of mossbanker, from Dutch marsbanker (“common scad or Atlantic horse mackerel (Trachurus trachurus)”), from Marsdiep (“deep tide-race between Den Helder and Texel in the Netherlands”) + bank (“shallow part of the sea near a coast”) + -er (suffix forming nouns denoting male inhabitants of a place).

First Known Use

1839

1886t