slang. [perh. a. F. dial. funkier = OF. funkier, fungier:—L. *fūmicare (It. fumicare), fūmigāre, f. fūmus smoke. (FUNK sb.2, though app. f. this vb., is recorded earlier.)]
1. trans. To blow smoke upon (a person); to annoy with smoke.
1699. W. King, Furmetry, iii. 56. What with strong smoke, and with his stronger breath, He funks Basketia and her son to death.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills, VI. 303. He … with a sober Dose Of Coffee funks his Nose.
1753. Smollett, Ct. Fathom (1784), 119/1. He proposed that we should retire into a corner, and funk one another with brimstone, till one of use should give out.
1785. Grose, Dict. Vulg. Tongue, s.v., To funk the cobbler, a school boy’s trick, performed with assa fœtida and cotton, which are stuffed into a pipe … and … the smoke is blown … through the crannies of a cobler’s stall.
1835. Marryat, Jac. Faithf., xxv. Do look how the old gentleman is funking Mary, and casting sheep’s eyes at her through the smoke.
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Spectre Tappington. An arrangement happily adapted for the escape of the noxious fumes up the chimney, without that unmerciful ‘funking’ each other, which a less scientific disposition of the weed would have induced.
b. To smoke (a pipe, tobacco). † Also, to blow (tobacco smoke) on (a person).
a. 1704. T. Brown, An Inscription upon a Tobacco-box, Wks. 1730, I. 65.
| But now, since Jove, like a good-natur’d brother, | |
| Gives us the Indian weed to funk and smother, | |
| One box has made atonement for another. |
1733. Revolution Politicks, II. 67. When the King was upon his Trial, did not the Soldiers funk Tobacco in on the King as he sat, to offend him, because they knew he was no lover of Tobacco?
1764. T. Brydges, Homer Travest. (1797), II. 54. Where a round dozen pipes they funk, And then return to town dead drunk.
1791. Huddesford, Salmag., 114. A pipe I did funk.
c. intr. To smoke.
1829. H. Murray, N. Amer., I. iv. 211. The grain having funked for six and twenty weeks in the ship’s hold.
1832. W. Stephenson, Gateshead Local Poems, 29. At Jenny Brown’s she’d smoke and funk.
1855. Browning, Fra Lippo, 174. My straw-fire flared and funked.
1860. Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms, s.v., When the smoke puffs out from a chimney place or stove, we say ‘it funks.’
2. To cause an offensive smell.
1708. Motteux, Rabelais, IV. xxxii. 92. When he funck’d, it was Wash’d-Leather Boots.
1829. Brockett, N. C. Words, Funk, to smoke or rather to cause an offensive smell.
Hence Funking ppl. a.
1700. S. Parker, Six Philosoph. Ess., 54. Without the blind Salvo of Antiperistasis many a funking Boor may have had his Pipe lighted by a Flash this minute, and beat out of his mouth by a Pellet of Frost the next.
