bunker

Meaning

Noun

• A hardened shelter, often partly buried or fully underground, designed to protect the inhabitants from falling bombs or other attacks.
• A container for storing coal or fuel oil for a ship's engine; the quantity of fuel needed to replenish that container.
• The coal compartment on a tank engine.
• A large bin or container for storing coal, often built outdoors in the yard of a house.
• One who bunks off; a truant from school.
• The menhaden, any of several species of fish in the genera Brevoortia (genus) and Ethmidium (genus).

Origin

• The origin of the noun is Unknown; the earliest sense is sense 6.1 (“box or chest, the lid of which serves as a seat”), from Scots bunker, probably from Old Norse bunki (probably whence bunk), from Proto-Germanic *bunkô, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *bʰenǵʰ- or *bʰeg-. Sense 1 (“hardened shelter designed to protect the inhabitants from falling bombs or other attacks”) was derived from German Bunker during World War II, which was itself from bunker (sense 5).
• The verb is derived from the noun.