Also 9 bunkart. [Etymology uncertain; cf. BUNK and BANKER4.]
1. A seat or bench (‘serving also for a chest’ Jamieson). Sc.
a. 1758. Ramsay, Poems (1844), 91. Ithers frae aff the bunkers sank.
1790. Burns, Tam o’ Shanter, 119. At winnock-bunker … sat auld Nick.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., ix. No seat accommodated him so well as the ‘bunker’ at Woodend.
attrib. 1831. Hone’s Year-book, 1127. Upon the bunker seat of the window they found three bottles.
2. An earthen seat or bank in the fields. dial.
1805. Leslie of Powis, &c. (Jam.). The fishers … built an open bunkart or seat.
1880. Antrim & Down Gloss. (E. D. S.), Bunker, a low bank at a road side, a road side channel.
3. A receptacle for coal on board ship; sometimes also (Sc.) on land.
1839. Parl. Report Steam Vessel Accid., 74. Neither the bunkers nor the coal-hold were cleared out so often as they should be.
1851. Illust. Lond. News, 24. Bunkers to hold 890 tons of coal.
1864. Times, 10 Dec., 12/2. The Cadmus has all her guns, shot, shell, and other stores on board, and her bunkers filled with upwards of 200 tons of coal.
1876. Davis, Polaris Exp., xviii. 450. The bunkers and bulkheads below deck were torn down.
attrib. 1882. B. Phillips, in Harper’s Mag., 594/2. You can see the trail of smoke from that bunker steamer now to westward.
1885. Pall Mall Gaz., 19 Dec., 9/1. Calling … to embark bunker coals for use on the voyage.
4. Golf: ‘A sandy hollow formed by the wearing away of the turf on the “links.”’ Sc.
1824. Scott, Redgauntlet, Let. x. They sat cosily niched into what you might call a bunker, a little sand-pit.
1867. Chambers, Inform. People, II. 693/2. This club [long-spoon] is useful, too, for elevating a ball, and driving it over hazards, such as bunkers, whins, &c.
1867. Cornh. Mag., April, 496. A fellow who puts you into a whin or a bunker every other stroke.
