"berk" meaning in English

See berk in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /bɝk/ [General-American], /bɜː(ɹ)k/ [UK] Audio: En-au-berk.ogg [Australia] Forms: berks [plural]
Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)k Etymology: Cockney rhyming slang, an ellipsis and clipping of Berkeley Hunt, a prominent hunt at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, to mean cunt. Etymology templates: {{m|en|cunt}} cunt Head templates: {{en-noun}} berk (plural berks)
  1. (UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang, derogatory, vulgar) Synonym of cunt in its various senses, (now especially somewhat endearing) a fool, a prat, a twit, etc. Wikipedia link: Berkeley Castle, Berkeley Hunt Tags: Australia, Ireland, New-Zealand, UK, derogatory, slang, vulgar Categories (topical): English minced oaths Synonyms: cunt in its various senses [synonym, synonym-of], cunt and Thesaurus:fool and idiot Related terms: Belvoir (english: pronounced Beaver)

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for berk meaning in English (3.1kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "cunt"
      },
      "expansion": "cunt",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Cockney rhyming slang, an ellipsis and clipping of Berkeley Hunt, a prominent hunt at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, to mean cunt.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "berks",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "berk (plural berks)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Australian English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "British English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "name": "English minced oaths",
          "parents": [
            "Minced oaths",
            "Euphemisms",
            "Figures of speech",
            "Rhetoric",
            "Language",
            "Communication",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Irish English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "New Zealand English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2003 July 12, Nicholas Lezard, “Ad execs quoting Gramsci? Only in France”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
          "text": "His chat-up techniques have to be read to be imagined—they make the crudest of Loaded-style berks seem classy—and he earns far, far too much money.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006 February 3, Graham Linehan, The IT Crowd, season 1, episode 2",
          "roman": "You berk.",
          "text": "I don't know why they couldn't just keep it as it was! How hard is it to remember 911?\nYou mean 999...\nI mean 999!\nThat's the American one!\nYeah!",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of cunt in its various senses, (now especially somewhat endearing) a fool, a prat, a twit, etc."
      ],
      "id": "en-berk-en-noun-w~ngs9Wa",
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "cunt",
          "cunt#English"
        ],
        [
          "its",
          "its"
        ],
        [
          "various",
          "various"
        ],
        [
          "sense",
          "sense"
        ],
        [
          "endearing",
          "endearing"
        ],
        [
          "fool",
          "fool"
        ],
        [
          "prat",
          "prat"
        ],
        [
          "twit",
          "twit"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang, derogatory, vulgar) Synonym of cunt in its various senses, (now especially somewhat endearing) a fool, a prat, a twit, etc."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "english": "pronounced Beaver",
          "word": "Belvoir"
        }
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "extra": "(now especially somewhat endearing) a fool, a prat, a twit, etc",
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "cunt in its various senses"
        },
        {
          "word": "cunt and Thesaurus:fool and idiot"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Australia",
        "Ireland",
        "New-Zealand",
        "UK",
        "derogatory",
        "slang",
        "vulgar"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Berkeley Castle",
        "Berkeley Hunt"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/bɝk/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/bɜː(ɹ)k/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "rhymes": "-ɜː(ɹ)k"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "birk"
    },
    {
      "audio": "En-au-berk.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/82/En-au-berk.ogg/En-au-berk.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/En-au-berk.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "berk"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "cunt"
      },
      "expansion": "cunt",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Cockney rhyming slang, an ellipsis and clipping of Berkeley Hunt, a prominent hunt at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, to mean cunt.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "berks",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "berk (plural berks)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "english": "pronounced Beaver",
      "word": "Belvoir"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "Australian English",
        "British English",
        "Cockney rhyming slang",
        "English 1-syllable words",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English derogatory terms",
        "English ellipses",
        "English endearing terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English minced oaths",
        "English nouns",
        "English slang",
        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with homophones",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English vulgarities",
        "Irish English",
        "New Zealand English",
        "Rhymes:English/ɜː(ɹ)k",
        "Rhymes:English/ɜː(ɹ)k/1 syllable"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2003 July 12, Nicholas Lezard, “Ad execs quoting Gramsci? Only in France”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
          "text": "His chat-up techniques have to be read to be imagined—they make the crudest of Loaded-style berks seem classy—and he earns far, far too much money.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006 February 3, Graham Linehan, The IT Crowd, season 1, episode 2",
          "roman": "You berk.",
          "text": "I don't know why they couldn't just keep it as it was! How hard is it to remember 911?\nYou mean 999...\nI mean 999!\nThat's the American one!\nYeah!",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of cunt in its various senses, (now especially somewhat endearing) a fool, a prat, a twit, etc."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "cunt",
          "cunt#English"
        ],
        [
          "its",
          "its"
        ],
        [
          "various",
          "various"
        ],
        [
          "sense",
          "sense"
        ],
        [
          "endearing",
          "endearing"
        ],
        [
          "fool",
          "fool"
        ],
        [
          "prat",
          "prat"
        ],
        [
          "twit",
          "twit"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang, derogatory, vulgar) Synonym of cunt in its various senses, (now especially somewhat endearing) a fool, a prat, a twit, etc."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "extra": "(now especially somewhat endearing) a fool, a prat, a twit, etc",
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "cunt in its various senses"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "Australia",
        "Ireland",
        "New-Zealand",
        "UK",
        "derogatory",
        "slang",
        "vulgar"
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Berkeley Castle",
        "Berkeley Hunt"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/bɝk/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American"
      ]
    },
    {
      "ipa": "/bɜː(ɹ)k/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    },
    {
      "rhymes": "-ɜː(ɹ)k"
    },
    {
      "homophone": "birk"
    },
    {
      "audio": "En-au-berk.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/82/En-au-berk.ogg/En-au-berk.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/En-au-berk.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "cunt and Thesaurus:fool and idiot"
    }
  ],
  "word": "berk"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.