to hunch over
17
4.2
- phrasal verb
- /hʌnʧ ˈoʊvər/
:
encorvarse sobre
- After hours of studying, he was hunched over his textbooks, trying to stay focused.
And he was kind of tall, a little bit hunched over.
- And he was kind of tall, a little bit hunched over.
- When I buy flip flops, I'm going to think of these guys working so hard in this little hot room, hunched over, making them from scratch.
- I took it and it was four months of nights, weekends, no life, a lost Christmas and New Year's Eve spent hunched over the computer.
- And eight years ago, a bunch of my friends were just hunched over a laptop on Reddit, vaping on their phones, just going, you know what?
- And I would always hunch over in pictures to try to.
- And they're going to be like hunched over, like, you know, like, like this is.
Examples
-
I would direct them to sit in front of Zoom all day, hunched over and get stressed out about emails.
-
Jimmy sat up straight, while Francisco and Kevin hunched over their notepads with their faces inches from the page.
Academic text (2003) -
Look at you, all hunched over like that.
-
Look at him all hunched over like he was left on the side of the road.
-
Many of them hunched over in prayer.
-
You walked kinda hunched over, you know?
-
The next morning at work, Howard hunched over his desk with focused intensity.
Fiction book (1994) -
I walked slowly to my car and sat hunched over the steering wheel.
Fiction book (1990) -
Ily sat at her desk on the far side, hunched over the monitor.
Fiction book (1992) -
The two men are hunched over a Formica table, peering through square magnifiers into stainless trays.
Fiction book (1991)
Synonyms
418
1.5
To bend or rest at an angle against something
194
1.0
To lean forward at the waist
51
4.2
To bend forward and pull the shoulders in so the back rounds
27
2.6
To bend your body forward at the waist
22
4.6
To sit, stand, or walk with the shoulders and head bent forward in a lazy way
2
4.4
Bend your upper body forward and round your shoulders, often when you feel cold or tired
Antonyms
How Bent
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to bend forward with the back rounded' is directly derivable from 'hunch' (to bend forward/round the back) combined with the particle 'over' indicating forward/over position. This verb + particle composition is a common and transparent motion/posture pattern in English (and mirrored in many other languages), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily understand it.
Etymology
The phrasal verb hunch over comes from the image of making a small hump with your back, where hunch is the rounded shape and over shows leaning forward. So, to hunch over means to 'bend forward' with your shoulders and upper back rounded, often because you are tired or concentrating.