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 ; notdexterous ;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
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word awk.
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:
-
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:
-
"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.
-
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}'
frogapplause commented on the word awk
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
ruzuzu commented on the word awk
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
deinonychus commented on the word awk
Being left-handed, I find these "synonyms" a bit insulting. (But I guess singular and distinguished are nice...)
October 4, 2012
Gammerstang commented on the word awk
(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