hunky-dory

adj. Slang
Perfectly satisfactory; fine.

[Probably alteration of hunky, safe, all right, from obsolete hunk, goal, home in a game, from Dutch honk, from Frisian hunk.]

from Frisian
This word originated in Netherlands

A Japanese performer in New York City seems to have invented the word hunky-dory. But we trace its beginning to Friesland on the north coasts of the Netherlands and Germany.

According to John Russell Bartlett's 1877 Dictionary of Americanisms, hunky-dory was the invention of a performer called Japanese Tommy, who was popular in the 1860s. He is said to have based it on the name of a street in Tokyo, or perhaps Yokohama, called Honcho-dori. (In Japanese, Honcho-dori means something like "Main Street," and many cities have one.) But Tommy wouldn't have thought of it if there hadn't already been the adjective hunk in English meaning "safe" or "in a good position." This particular hunk derived from a Dutch word meaning the goal or "home" in a game. And that in turn evidently came from Frisian. In West Frisian honck means "house" or "safe place"; in East Frisian hunk means "nook" or "retreat" or "home" in a game. Before becoming obsolete, that hunk spawned hunky, and whether it was really Japanese Tommy's doing or just children's play, somebody added dory to make hunky-dory, first noted in print in 1866.

West Frisian is spoken by 700,000 people in the Netherlands. North Frisian and East Frisian, related but different languages, are spoken by about 10,000 people each in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, near the Danish border. Like English, Dutch, and German, the Frisian languages belong to the West Germanic branch of our Indo-European language family.

In fact, Frisian is the closest foreign language to English. Sixty percent of its basic vocabulary is similar to ours. You can almost understand a Frisian sentence posted on the World Wide Web: Lowlands-L is in automatisearre diskusjelist, dy't ferspraat wurdt fia e-mail, that is, "Lowlands-L is an automated discussion list that is spread via e-mail." Many English words have Frisian cousins, but the hunk of hunky-dory is the only Frisian word that is definitely an ancestor of an English one. The most famous Frisian in recent times, by the way, was Mata Hari, dancer, spy, and femme fatale.

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Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The adjective has one meaning:

Meaning #1: (informal) being satisfactory or in satisfactory condition
  Synonyms: all right, all-right, fine, ok, o.k., okay

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Dansk (Danish)
adj. - glimrende, strålende, finfin

Nederlands (Dutch)
prima, prettig, in orde

Français (French)
adj. - au poil, super

Deutsch (German)
adj. - in Ordnung, prima

Ελληνική (Greek)
adj. - (καθομ.) τσίφτικος, φίνος

Italiano (Italian)
ideale, come dovrebbe essere

Português (Portuguese)
adj. - satisfatório (gír.)

Русский (Russian)
мировой, первоклассный

Español (Spanish)
adj. - muy bien, es guay del Paraguay

Svenska (Swedish)
adj. - toppen, prima

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
极好的, 了不起的

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
adj. - 極好的, 了不起的

한국어 (Korean)
adj. - 안심할 수 있는, 훌륭한, 탓할 데 없는

日本語 (Japanese)
adj. - 安心できる, 素敵な

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(صفه) حسن, رائع‏

עברית (Hebrew)
adj. - ‮מעולה, מסודר‬

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