Luxembourgish

Noun

Zonk m ‎(plural Zénk)

1. fence

English

Noun

zonk ‎(plural zonks)

1. An unfavorable card or token, or undesirable or worthless item used as a prize in a contest or game show (such as Let's Make a Deal).
   • 2003-10-1, Gregory Arthur Baer Life: The Odds (And How to Improve Them), Penguin, ISBN 1592400337, page 237

     There will always be two doors that hold zonks, so regardless of whether you initially chose the grand prize or a zonk, Monty will always be able to show you a zonk not chosen.

   • 2003-12-30, Jerrilyn Farmer, Mumbo Gumbo: A Madeline Bean Novel, HarperCollins, ISBN 0380817195, page 204:

     A live, mane-embellished, SAG-card-carrying lion, I should point out, who was likely being staged for a few minutes off to the side before he would be used as a freaking “Zonk!” on a freaking game show, for crying out loud.

   • 2004, Jay Mechling, On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226517055, page 124

     A zonk was way overdue, yet the boys knew that the Seniors knew they would think this was a zonk and would trick the boys by making this another real prize.

   • 2004, Timothy V. Rasinski, Nancy Padak, Effective reading strategies: teaching children who find reading difficult, Pearson/Prentice Hall, ISBN 0131121863, page 150

     I have three empty coffee cans, two with prizes and one with a slip of paper that says "Zonk."

   • 2006-05-09, Bruce Frey, Statistics hacks, O'Reilly Media, ISBN 0596101643, page 208:

     Avoid the Zonk / On the TV show Let's Make a Deal, contestants often had to choose between three curtains.

   • 2008, Max H. Bazerman, Don A. Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0470049456, page 53:

     Once a contestant picked a door, Monty would often open one of the other two doors to reveal a zonk, ...

   • 2009, Victor Shoup, A Computational Introduction to Number Theory and Algebra, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521516447, page 217:

     Behind two doors is a “zonk,” that is, something amusing but of little or no value, such as a goat, ...

2. (slang) A feeling of a drug taking hold.

Translations

Verb

zonk ‎(third-person singular simple present zonks, present participle zonking, simple past and past participle zonked)

1. (transitive) To make (someone) sleepy or delirious.
2. (intransitive, usually followed by “out”) To become exhausted, sleepy or delirious.

   After two hours of studying, I zonked out.

Derived terms

• zonk out
• zonked

Translations

Dutch

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɔŋk

Verb

zonk

1. singular past indicative of zinken