A loud, sharp sound made by a horn, or to make such a sound.
Likely imitative in origin, first recorded in the 1500s. The word mimics the actual sound a goose makes, and was later applied to mechanical horns and vehicle horns. Pure onomatopoeia that captured both animal and machine sounds.
Honk is one of the few words in English that geese 'invented'—we literally adopted their sound as our word for it. When cars were invented, we gave them the same word because it sounded right.
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