Other forms: hunkers, hunkered, hunkering
To hunker is to crouch down low on your heels. Hunker down, hunkered by the fire, hunkering in the trench.
It nearly always takes down, and hunker down has widened to mean settling in to wait out something bad — a storm, a siege, a difficult period. The posture itself is a resting squat, comfortable to those who grew up doing it and hard for those who did not. Note that the word is Scottish in origin.
1verbhunkerTo crouch down low on your heels.
“He hunkered by the fire, warming his hands.”
2verbsettleTo settle in to wait out something bad.
“With the storm coming, we hunkered down at home with candles and plenty of food.”
hunker is a crouching.
Hunker is originally Scottish and its origin is unknown, though a Germanic root meaning to squat is likely.
Proto-Indo-European
*kuk-néh₂
Proto-Germanic
*hūkan- — to squat
Old Norse
huka — to crouch
English, today
hunker
Built from
Originally Scottish. Origin unknown, but probably of gem - origin, perhaps hunk- a nasalised variant of huk- (compare Scots hoonk, hounk, variants of huk, hok (“to squat, crouch”); Scots hocker (“to crouch down, hunker”)), all of gmq - origin, from Old Norse huka (“to crouch”), from Proto-Germanic hūkan- (“to squat”), from hūkkan-, back-formed from the iterative huk(k)ōn-, from Proto-Indo-European kuk-néh₂, from kewk- (“to curve, bend”) (also the source of high). Probable cognates include Old Norse húka, Dutch huiken, and German hocken.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire