8 April 2021
Hunky dory is an Americanism meaning satisfactory, fine. The term appears in the 1860s, and while its origin isn’t known for certain, we have a pretty good idea how it came about. It most likely is an expansion of the older slang term hunk, meaning safe, in a good position, which in turn is from the Frisian honcke or honck, a refuge, safe place, home, which appears in children’s games in New Amsterdam and later in New York before entering adult slang in the nineteenth century.
Hunk appears in the phrase to get hunk, meaning to be made whole after a loss, in a 24 May 1845 article in The Spirit of the Times about a horse race:
It is not a little singular that in one instance only did the favorite win! Those who lost their money on Fashion, had two or three chances to “get hunk,” especially on the last day.
And it appears regarding bank reserves in an article in New York’s Weekly Day Book with a dateline of 12 August 1853:
The great peculiarity of these institutions is, that they have plenty of money when everybody else has, and none when others have none. Just at the time when the merchants want money the most, and when, to carry one their business properly and successfully, they absolutely need it, the banks are short—haven’t a cent—can’t discount a dollar—“are absolutely borrowing to keep all hunk.”
And it’s recorded in the 1859 second edition of Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms:
HUNK. [...] 2. (Dutch, honk.) Place, post, home. A word descended from the Dutch children, and much used by New York boys in their play. “To be hunk,” or “all hunk,” is to have reached the goal or place of meeting without being intercepted by one of the opposite party, to be all safe.
This word has also made its way into political life. In a debate of the Board of Aldermen of New York (December, 1856), on the purchase of certain grounds on the East River for a market site, Alderman Ely said:
Mr. L—— had filled in and made this ground in the waters of the East River without authority; and now he felt himself all hunk, and wanted to get this enormous sum out of the city. — N.Y. Tribune, Dec. 30, 1856.
In 1861, humorist Charles Farrar Browne, writing in the voice of a character named Artemus Ward, began using hunkey or hunky to mean good, manly, and especially in the phrase hunkey boy, often used to describe soldiers with the sense of brave, noble. From a Vanity Fair piece by him on 15 June 1861:
“Ha! do me eyes deceive me earsight? Is it some dreams? No, I reckon not! That frame! them store clothes! those nose! Yes, it is me own, me only Moses!”
He (Moses) folded her to his hart, with the remark that he was “a hunkey boy.”
In a 19 November 1862 piece about Artemus Ward visiting Canada and writing about the fall of Quebec to British forces in 1759:
Quebeck has seen lively times in a warlike way. The French and Britishers had a set-to there in 1759. Jim Wolfe commanded the latters, and Jo Moncalm the formers. Both were hunky boys, and fit nobly. But Wolfe had too many mesales[?] for Montcalm, and the French were slew’d.
Ward even used it in an 1862 romance:
Her tears fell fast. I too wept. I mixed my sobs with her’n. “Fly with me!” I cried.
Her lips met mine. I held her in my arms. I felt her breath upon my cheek! It was Hunkey.
And he used it describe a good watch in a 30 July 1863 piece:
The fair maid, who was Floyd’s Neece, had hookt it while reposing on me weskit. It was a hunky watch—a family hair loom, I wouldn’t have parted with it for a dollar and sixty nine cents.
Ward wasn’t the only writer to use hunky, though. Two pieces that appeared in Vanity Fair, a magazine that frequently published Ward’s work, also make use of it. There is this racist piece from 9 November 1861, where it appears in the mouth of a Native American character:
“They shall be free!” cried WO-NO-SHE, his knife leaping from his belt as he spoke; “WO-NO-SHE swears it!”
“Hunkey boy!” said WOSHY-BOSHY.
There is more on Artemus Ward and the Native-American connection in a bit.
And in a piece extolling naval commander John Rogers from 20 November 1861:
VANITY FAIR desists for a moment from the flip-flap of joy to shake metaphorically by the hand Capt. John Rogers, commander of the sloop-of-war Flag in the Port Royal Fleet. Not, indeed, that we should not like to so present our respects to every one of the “hunkey boys” who had a finger in the Beaufort pie and helped spoil its “crust.” But to Capt. John Rogers we feel individually indebted.
The -dory is added by 1864. The origin of this element is not known for certain, but it is most likely simply reduplication, as in hotsy-totsy, hootchy-cootchy, or hoity-toity. The earliest use of hunky-dory that can be reliably dated is by Henry Warren Howe, a Union soldier in the Civil War. On 3 November 1864, Howe wrote in a letter to his family:
Fran., if you can obtain the use of a good piano I will hire it for you, with pleasure, and, perhaps, purchase it, and let it remain in the family until I get a “bonnie guid wife.” Captains Johnston and Ferris are in the hospital at Annapolis, Maryland, and doing well. I send you a sprig of cedar. Mr. B. goes in the morning, and it is late, so I will close. I am “Hunkey Dora.”
Several days later, on 14 November 1864, he wrote:
Here I am in quarters “Hunkey Dora,” writing you; position, astride a cracker box; time, 8 o’clock in the evening; candle light, volumes of letter matter paraded. On my left, Comrade Barker, ditto. First, a description of my house: a pig-pen made of fence rails banked with dirt, a piece of canvas for a roof, and what completes the arrangement which constitutes the application “Hunkey Dora.” is a short chimney, built a la Southern style, fire-place inside, and there you have me, I reckon!
And he uses the adjective hunkey in a 30 November 1864 letter:
I am well and “hunkey.”
Around this time, hunky-dory also appears in a song by the blackface performers Christy’s Minstrels, but the published song is not dated, but is most likely from 1865 (based on the advertisements for other songbooks included in the paratext). Titled Hunkey Dorey, the opening verse of the song reads:
One of the boys am I,
That always am in clover;
With spirits light and high,
‘Tis well I’m known all over.
I am always to be found,
A singing in my glory;
With your smiling faces round,
‘Tis then I’m hunkey dorey.
While we don’t know the precise date of this song, it is one of the earliest known appearances.
Also in 1865, hunky-dory makes is used as the name of a Native-American character in Dan Bryant’s minstrel show. The name Hun-Kee-Do-Ree appears in advertisements for the show in January 1865. The show also featured Artemus Ward, or at least readings from his works. From an ad in the New York Atlas of 14 January 1865:
BRYANTS’ MINSTRELS.—
Mechanics’ Hall, 472 Broadway
Monday, Jan. 16th, and during the week.
CROWDED HOUSES ANOTHER NOVELTY!
THE LIVE INJUN.
HUN-KEE-DO-REE. .(the Live Ingin)...DAN BRYANT
ARTEMUS WARD AMONG THE MORMANS.
TAMING A BUTTERFLY. HAUNTED HOUSE.
THE MISERABLES. THE CHALLENGE DANCE.
Fife and Drum Major. Tinpanonion.
Pillywillywink Band.
Parquette, 50 cts; Gallery, 90 cts; Commence at 7½.
It also is used as a Native-American name by comic A. M. Griswold. From a notice in the Troy Daily Times (New York) of 8 February 1865:
—A. M. Griswold, a comic writer, well known to newspaper readers at the West, as the “Fat Contributor,” is in the lecture field with a new lecture entitled “Hun-ki-do-ri.”
And on 1 October 1866 it appears in the magazine The Galaxy:
I cannot conceive on any theory of etymology that I ever studied why anything that is “hunkee doree,” or “ hefty,” or “ kindy dusty,” should be so admirable
So, it seems hunky-dory developed from the slang word hunky, meaning good, with the second element being added as reduplication. It doesn’t have a precise origin, but seems to have simulataneously appeared in both U.S. Civil War soldiers’ slang and in minstrel/comic acts and writing in the early 1860s.
It is often claimed that hunky-dory has its origins in Western sailors visiting Yokohama, Japan. One of the streets in Yokohama is named Honchodori, and in the mid nineteenth centuries it was lined with bars and brothels, just the place for sailors arriving in port after a long sea voyage. The chronology of this explanation works—Japan opened up to foreign trade in the 1850s. If this explanation is correct, the American adoption of the term would likely have been a combination of sailors bringing tales of the place home and the older slang term hunky. Unfortunately for this explanation, however, it is just conjecture. There is no evidence linking American use of hunky-dory to Japan. None of the early uses are by sailors or in nautical contexts. So, while the explanation is chronologically plausible, the lack of evidence makes it unlikely.
Sources:
Advertisement. New York Atlas, 14 January 1865, 8. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Bartlett, John Russell. Dictionary of Americanisms, second edition. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1859, 208. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Capt. John Rogers.” Vanity Fair, 30 November 1861, 242. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Christy’s Bones and Banjo Melodist. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, n.d., 54. Harvard University’s copy bound with George Christy’s Essence of Old Kentucky. New York: Dick and Fitzgerald, 1862. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Commercial and Money Matters” (12 August 1853). The Weekly Day Book (New York), 13 August 1853, 8. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Fashion Again a Winner!” The Spirit of the Times, 24 May 1845, 146. American Antiquarian Society (AAS) Historical Periodicals Collection: Series 3.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. hunky-dory, adj.
Howe, Henry Warren. Passages from the Life of Henry Warren Howe, Consisting of Diary and Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861–1865. Lowell, Massachusetts: Courier-Citizen Co., 1899, 174, 179. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Live Metaphors.” The Galaxy, 1 October 1866, 275. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, s.v. hunky, adj.1, hunk, n.2 and adj.
“Personal.” Troy Daily Times (New York), 8 February 1865, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Ward, Artemus (Charles Farrar Browne). “Artemus Ward in Virginia.” St. Albans Daily Messenger (Vermont), 30 July 1863, 2. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
———. “A. Ward in Canada.” Crisis (Columbus, Ohio), 19 November 1862, 8. NewsBank: America’s Historical Newspapers.
———. “Marion, a Romance of the French School.” Artemus Ward: His Book. New York: Carleton, 1862, 237. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
———. “Moses, the Sassy; or the Disguised Duke.” Vanity Fair, 15 June 1861, 273. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
“Woshy-Boshy, or the Prestidigitating Squaw of the Snakeheads.” Vanity Fair, 9 November 1861, 209.
Thanks to Ben Zimmer for pointing out the hun-kee-do-ree and hun-ki-do-ri spellings.