Comment on: What's the origin of "hunky dory"?

One possible explanation mentioned was:
"Another story however (attributed by the Morrises to Charles Earle Funk) traces the origin back to the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam: taking the word hunk as derived from the Dutch word honk for goal. When you reached the goal, everything was hunky-dory. How the dory got into the expression was not clear."

I'm a native Dutchman and my gut tells me this explanation just doesn't work. The word 'honk' is seldom used in Dutch but it does not, nor to my knowledge has it ever meant 'goal'. A literal translation is very hard but it's usually a term used for a home away from home or a clubhouse. These days it's very outdated but the Dutch settlers might not have thought so at the time

Hunkey-dori DOES however remind me of the term 'Okiedokie' which means more or less the same, but I really couldn't say if this is a Dutch term. Personally I believe O.K. (Okay) came from Okidoki (although I've heard tell of an explanation that says OK came from a Dutch pilot who chose the wrong letters to abbreviate 'All Clear'.)

Not that it's of any importance whatsoever, but having only a limited intelligence I just jumped at the chance of finally making a contribution, no matter how small, to the shrine of wisdom that is The Straight Dope ;-)

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<inferiority complex>
You ain't much if you ain't Dutch. </inferiority complex>


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Link to Mailbag Article: What's the origin of "hunky dory"? --



[Note: This message has been edited by CKDextHavn]

By the way, I used two spellings of okiedokie / okidoki but that's just because of the new spelling rules 'they' keep coming up with every three years, just to confuse the hell out of everyone over the age of 12 who is not majoring in Dutch. That's why I messed up Honkey Dorey (I said Dori) too. Oh well...

"OK" appears to derive from "Oll Korrekt", and there is a clear and unambiguous statement of this dating to 1839. Other theories have included Cherokee "oke" ("it is"), French "au quai", or Scots "och, aye".

"Hunky-dory" is believed to be a jocular expansion of "hunky", meaning "solidly built", derived from "hunk".

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John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams

Some words don't have a set origin:

hun•ky-do•ry \'he¾-ke-"dor-e, -"dor-\ adjective [obs. E dial. hunk (home base) + -dory (origin unknown)] (1866)
: quite satisfactory : fine

(C)1996 Zane Publishing, Inc. and Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

"Hunky" is an ethnic slur from the Chicago area for an immigrant from Poland.Connected??

Long-time straight dope junkies know that the origins of the term OK were exhaustively detailed in one of the earlier SD books.

"Hunky" = "Polish"?

It used to be "Bohunk" = "Bohemian" (i.e., Czech).

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John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams