dank

American  

[dangk] / dæŋk /

adjective

danker, dankest

1. unpleasantly moist or humid; damp and, often, chilly.

   a dank cellar.

   Synonyms:

   soggy, sticky, muggy, clammy, wet

2. Slang. (of marijuana) excellent; high quality.

   There was plenty of booze and dank weed at the party.

3. Slang. (of an internet meme) passé or clichéd; out of touch; having missed the cultural Zeitgeist.

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noun

1. Slang. high-quality marijuana.

   We were just chilling out and smoking dank together.

dank British  

/ dæŋk /

adjective

1. (esp of cellars, caves, etc) unpleasantly damp and chilly

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Usage

What else does dank mean? When not describing something as "moist" and "humid" like a basement, dank is a slang term describing something as "excellent," especially marijuana. Dank can also refer to memes that are played out or extremely weird.

Other Word Forms

• dankly adverb
• dankness noun

Etymology

Origin of dank

First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English probably from Scandinavian; compare dialectal Swedish dänka, Norwegian dynke “to moisten,” cognate with Old Norse dǫkk “water hole”

Explanation

You can describe something that is unpleasantly cool, damp, and clammy as dank. If you have ever visited a cave or an unfinished basement, you know how a dank place feels. Yuck. The adjective dank is often used to describe places that would have moist or damp walls. A dank cave can provide hundreds of bats shelter, but you probably wouldn't want to visit them. Tunnels can also be choice dank locations: "The tunnel under the harbor was always dank, and the workers constantly had to battle mold and lichen on the tile walls." One way to remember dank's meaning is to think of dark since they share three letters and seem to go together; a dank place is often a dark one as well.

Example Sentences

Mystified, he wanders the dank halls of their rented palazzo and the fetid alleyways of the “pestilential city” where canal waters slither past like “a fat, grey-green worm.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 9, 2025

These are the thoughts running through my mind at 3:30 a.m. in a dank basement on a dance floor my friends and I love to live on.

From Salon • Mar. 31, 2025

Most often, though, it is like a cold, dank cellar…..

From BBC • Oct. 20, 2024

For those who still don’t know what a dank meme is, let the explaining by this 142-year-old newspaper begin.

From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 24, 2024

But on that morning in Ten Alders village and up on the High Fall, the dank grey fog had clung a while, and then suddenly it blew and drifted and melted away.

From "A Wizard of Earthsea" by Ursula K. Le Guin

Related Words

• chilly
• damp
• humid
• muggy
• steamy
• sticky
• wet