Meaning

A large ship used for transportation; (more generally) a large ship that is difficult to manoeuvre..

Definitions by Sense

1. A large ship used for transportation; (more generally) a large ship that is difficult to manoeuvre.
2. A non-functional but floating ship, usually stripped of equipment and rigging, and often put to other uses such as accommodation or storage.
3. (figuratively) A large structure with a dominating presence.
4. (figuratively) A big (and possibly clumsy) person.
5. To reduce (a ship) to a non-functional hulk.
6. To temporarily house (goods, people, etc.) in such a hulk.
7. (transitive) To move (a large, hulking body).
8. (intransitive) To be a hulk, that is, a large, hulking, and often imposing presence.

Example Sentences

Light boates ſaile ſwift, though greater hulkes draw deepe.

Their ſhips thus ſet on ſhore (to fruſtrate their deſire) / Thoſe Daniſh Hulkes became the food of Engliſh fire.

They could see the lighthouse shining on Quarantine Island, and the green lights on the old coal hulks.

A sister ship, originally the Patriotic, and later renamed Lady Leinster and finally the Lady Connaught, was badly damaged by a mine between Liverpool and Belfast; the British & Irish Steam Packet Company next brought [sic] the hulk back from the Belfast Steamship Company and converted her into a livestock carrier.

The sturdy trunk of Central Park Tower is rising nearby – a great glass hulk that will soon steal the crown for the most vertiginous residences on the planet.

Among its findings, the report says: "In recent years we have seen more stations transformed from run-down Victorian hulks, or spartan bus-sheltered platforms, into places that people can take pride in, feel comfortable in using, and which are fulfilling more of their wider potential.

In Fremantle very few vessels appear to have been reduced to hulks, and only one figure head Samuel Plimsoll, [Fig. 62] survives from a sailing ship hulked in 1904. [...] The Sarah Burnyeat was hulked in Albany in 1886, [...]

No further additions were made to this group, and by 1729 the Rank was extinct (the last to be struck was the Ludlow, which had been hulked in 1719).

Word Forms

• hulks
• hulke
• hulking
• hulked

Synonyms for hulk

Related Words

When Should You Use Hulk?

Use hulk when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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