hunker down

Questions about hunker down

What does hunker down mean?

hunker down means "sit on one's heels". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for hunker down?

Close synonyms include squat, crouch, scrunch, scrunch up, hunker. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is hunker down a common word?

hunker down is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.