Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Awkwardly; wrongly.
  • noun See auk.
  • Turned in the opposite direction; directed the wrong way; backhanded: as, “an awk stroke,” Palsgrave.
  • Left; left-handed.
  • Wrong; erroneous; perverse: as, the awk end of a rod.
  • Awkward to use; clumsy: as, an awk tool.
  • Strange; singular; distinguished.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective obsolete Odd; out of order; perverse.
  • adjective obsolete Wrong, or not commonly used; clumsy; sinister.
  • adjective Obs. or Prov. Eng. Clumsy in performance or manners; unhandy; not dexterous; awkward.
  • adverb Perversely; in the wrong way.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective obsolete Odd; out of order; perverse.
  • adjective obsolete Wrong, or not commonly used; clumsy; sinister; as, the awk end of a rod (the butt end).
  • adjective obsolete Clumsy in performance or manners; unhandy; not dexterous; awkward.
  • adverb obsolete Perversely; in the wrong way.
  • proper noun computing A Unix scripting language or the command line interface itself.
  • noun computing A Unix script written in the awk language.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old Norse ǫfugr/ǫfigr/afigr ("turned backwards") ( > Danish avet ("backwards"), Swedish avig ("turned backwards")), from Proto-Germanic. Cognate with German äbich, Gothic 𐌹𐌱𐌿𐌺𐍃 (ibuks, "turned back"). Akin to Sanskrit अपाच् (apāc, "turned away") . Compare dialect Danish ave ("to turn"), Icelandic öfga ("to reverse").

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Examples

  • When I run this bash script that calls awk, all the output is on a single line.

    LinuxQuestions.org 2010

  • If we don't want to use awk, which is a whole-blown programming language, then we can sort the output of cat and filter it via uniq:

    Original Signal - Transmitting Buzz 2008

  • If we don't want to use awk, which is a whole-blown programming language, then we can sort the output of cat and filter it via uniq:

    Original Signal - Transmitting Buzz 2008

  • "Yes, an 'yit Hugh's throwed him fair jest by main strength an' awk'ardness."

    Gideon's Band A Tale of the Mississippi George Washington Cable 1884

  • I was not familiar with that algorithm before, although I know the name Aho to be the 'a' in the famous "awk" Unix utility (Weinberg and Kernighan, also of great Unix fame are the 'w' and 'k').

    The Code Project Latest Articles Scot Brennecke 2010

  • : Create new display filter (1) • Introducing 'awk' • awk processes its input line by line • fields within one line are available with $1, $2 etc • standard field separator is \ "whitespace\" • C like printf function available • Goal: 192.168.1.30 3981 192.168.1.30 3982 to

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows LoveMyTool 2009

  • Are my greps all wrong? or maybe I need to use an "awk" ... still learning thx

    LinuxQuestions.org manwithaplan 2009

  • It’s also kind of awk­ward when I occa­sion­ally spot the cou­ple in my trav­els around Min­neapo­lis, given the nature of the mate­r­ial.

    Soap Vlogera « Snarkmarket 2006

  • So, with these things in mind, OS X is UNIX (which means bash, find, grep, xargs, awk, sed etc is there with all its power), Spotlight (also available in the terminal with mdfind command) and Expose is still way ahead of Windows.

    Win 7 Vs Mac OS X Leopard: Feature-by-Feature Showdown | Lifehacker Australia 2009

  • RAM: top - l 1 | awk '/PhysMem/{print "Used:" $8 "\n Free:" $10}'

    The Minimalist OS X Desktop | Lifehacker Australia 2009

Comments

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  • I don’t know if I’ve already mentioned this, but my uncle is living with us now. He tagged along with my parents to visit me a couple days ago and it was so awk. I don’t know why it doesn’t bother me that I have little to no desire to know my extended family. ~Unknown

    I didn't realize that awk stood on its own. I thought it was lazy English, which prompted me to play with this nonsensical variation: "He tagged along with my parents to visit me a couple days ago and it was so razor-billed auk."

    October 4, 2012

  • Turned in the opposite

    direction; directed

    the wrong way; backhanded:

    as, “an awk stroke,” Palsgrave.

    Left; left-handed.

    Wrong; erroneous;

    perverse: as,

    the awk end of a rod.

    Awkward to use; clumsy:

    as, an awk tool.

    Strange; singular;

    distinguished.

    Awkwardly; wrongly.

    See auk.

    --Cent. Dict.

    October 4, 2012

  • Being left-handed, I find these "synonyms" a bit insulting. (But I guess singular and distinguished are nice...)

    October 4, 2012

  • (adjective) - Inverted or confused. Bells are "rung awk" to give alarm of fire. Ray's South and East Country Words 1691 says that awkward is opposed to toward. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830

    April 22, 2018