Other forms: bunkers
A bunker is a reinforced shelter dug into the ground. An underground bunker, a concrete bunker, bunker mentality.
Being underground is what protects it: earth absorbs blast far better than any wall. Bunker mentality means a defensive refusal to hear anything from outside. In golf a bunker is a sand pit, which is the older sense — the Scots word meant a bench or a sand pit.
1nounbunkerA reinforced shelter dug into the ground.
“The general and his staff hid in a concrete bunker during the bombing.”
2nounsandA sand pit on a golf course.
“His ball landed in a bunker right next to the green.”
bunker is a shelter, or a hazard.
Scots bunker meant a bench, a seat or a sand pit. The military sense developed from the sense of a dug-out receptacle.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰenǵʰ- — thick
Proto-Germanic
*bunkô — a heap, pile; a bump, lump, a crowd
Old Norse
bunki — a heap
enm-esc
bunker
Scots
bunker — bench; pew; window-seat; sand pit (especially in golf); coal receptacle; sleeping berth, bunk
English, today
bunker
Built from
The origin of the noun is; 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 enm-esc 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.”)), 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 5). The verb is derived from the noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA