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dunkirk has 1 distinct synonym spread across 2 of its 3 senses. Each sense below keeps its own list, because a synonym belongs to a meaning and not to a word: swapping one sense's substitute into another sense's sentence is how a thesaurus makes writing worse. WordNet records no antonym for it — antonymy is a relation between word forms rather than concepts, so it is deliberately sparse.
Counts are distinct word forms across every sense. A synonym that appears under three senses is counted once here and shown three times below, under each sense it belongs to.
a crisis in which a desperate effort is the only alternative to defeat
“the Russians had to pull off a Dunkirk to get out of there”
Synonyms, antonyms and the broader and narrower relations for dunkirk come from Princeton University’s WordNet. Full sources and licences.
an amphibious evacuation in World War II (1940) when 330,000 Allied troops had to be evacuated from the beaches in northern France in a desperate retreat under enemy fire