sunk
- 1Past participle of sink.
The cargo ship was sunk by a violent storm centuries ago.
Many vessels have sunk along this rocky stretch of coastline.
Note
The form that follows have and be. Because sink works both ways (a ship can sink, and a storm can sink it), sunk serves the perfect (the ship has sunk) and the passive (the ship was sunk) alike. It carries the figurative sense too: her heart had sunk. For a lasting state before a noun, the usual adjective is sunken: a sunken wreck.
- 2Past tense of sink. Less common than sank and often avoided in formal writing.
The fishing boat sunk within minutes once the hull cracked open.
She sunk into the soft armchair after a long day on her feet.
Note
A past tense with a literary pedigree that standard English has since let go. Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811) has grief that "sunk within a few days into a calmer melancholy," and Jonathan Swift writes "He sunk beneath the cumbrous weight." Today it is dialectal, borrowing the shape of the past participle. In standard writing the simple past is sank: the ship sank, not the ship sunk.
sunk is a form of sink
sink, verb: To descend below the surface of a liquid or similar substance, or to cause something to do so. Full entry
- Spelling
- sink → sunk: irregular (no -ed)
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