Bunking

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Katie. I’m calling from Levittown, Pennsylvania.

Well, hello, Katie. Welcome from Levittown, the famous Levittown.

Oh, yeah, one of the famous Levittowns.

Very cool.

Cool, nice. Welcome.

Yeah, I’m calling about a word that I used to use where I grew up near Providence, Rhode Island.

When we were going to play hooky from school, we would say that we were going to bunk, B-U-N-K.

And since I left home, I have never heard it anywhere else, and nobody I knew said they used it growing up.

But then recently I was watching an episode of the British TV show, The IT Crowd, and one of the characters said that he was going to bunk off, meaning to play hooky.

And I was just curious because I always assumed it was just a New England thing, and it was just surprising to hear it elsewhere.

Very interesting. Now, when you played hooky, you didn’t go home and take a nap.

I mean, it’s not that kind of bunk, right?

No.

What would you do?

You know, go to the movies or wherever.

I actually, I was kind of a swear. I never bunked.

But, you know, go to the movies, get ice cream.

Get ice cream.

Which character in the IT crowd was it?

It was Roy.

Okay.

Roy’s Irish, yeah?

Yeah.

Okay, that makes a little more sense.

Yeah, it does.

It’s funny to have this from a speaker in Rhode Island.

So you’re saying it was pretty widespread in Rhode Island?

It was.

I grew up actually just over the border in Seekonk, Massachusetts.

My mom was from Attleboro close by, and she also said it.

But it seems like, you know, my friends who were from East Providence would also say it.

So I would say that it’s, you know, pretty widespread locally.

There is a really solid entry for bunk, meaning to run off or to escape or to leave in Green’s Dictionary of Slang.

And he takes it back as far as the 1840s to Lincolnshire, which is a part of, you know, the British Isles.

And so we know that there’s a strong history of it there.

It’s still used by modern English speakers throughout the British Isles.

And I am not surprised at all to find it in New England, not in the least.

Yeah, it’s also in the Dictionary of American Regional English.

Yeah, I’m not surprised.

Specifically in Rhode Island.

Yeah, there we go.

Pretty cool, right?

Yeah, and it’s interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

I have a friend from India, and just last night she bunked.

Oh, she took off?

Yeah, yeah.

We were taking a wilderness basics course, and she texted me and said, I’m going to bunk.

That’s cool, right?

Yeah.

Oh, that’s funny.

Yeah, I’m surprised to hear it so far back.

Well, language, yeah, it’s got to have roots.

And playing hooky.

That goes back way, way, way far.

Playing hooky has got a tradition, yeah.

I might not see you next week, by the way, Martha.

Oh, yeah?

You get a bunk?

You’ll be off getting ice cream.

All right, Katie, so how’s that?

Does it help you out a little bit?

Yeah, definitely, definitely.

Thank you so much.

Sure, take care.

Okay, thanks for calling.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye.

Of course, I never bunked.

You never bunk?

No, no, I might have.

Not even on, like, senior skip day when it was kind of, like, unofficially endorsed?

Well, I might have pretended like I had a fever.

Oh, I see.

Always looking for, yeah.

Not the pure, the pure, like, defiance.

Not from you.

Me?

No, not till much later.

Yeah, I rarely did.

My brother did a lot more of it, though.

Really?

Yeah, there was one house that we lived in where it was really easy to slip out of the house without being noticed.

Oh, yeah?

He did so much.

He got into so much trouble, too.

Really?

And you didn’t?

A couple times, but I would rather be home reading a book.

Yeah, yeah.

I’m going to go out and talk to humans when I have this giant bookshelf here.

They don’t make a lot of sense to me.

What is wrong with you?

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