Sc. and north. [app. onomatopœic; a variant fung is common (see Jamieson).] trans. and intr. To kick.
c. 1709. Auld Grey Mare, i. in Jacobite Songs (1887), 56. You’ve curried the auld mare’s hide, She’ll funk nae mair at you. Ibid., v. The good auld yaud Could nowther funk nor fling.
1821. Blackw. Mag., Nov., X. 393. The horse funkit him aff into the dub.
1823. J. Wilson, Trials Marg. Lyndsay, xxxv. 294. The beast’s funking like math.
1834. M. Scott, Cruise Midge (1859), 375. The quadruped funking up her heels and tossing the dry sand with her horns.
1892. Northumbld. Gloss., Funk, to kick, to kick up the heels as a horse or donkey does. ‘To funk off’ is to throw the rider.
Hence Funking vbl. sb. Also Funker.
1823. Blackw. Mag., March, XIII. 313. It’s hard to gar a wicked cout leave off funking.
1825–80. Jamieson, s.v., Dinna buy that beast, she’s a funker.
1852. R. S. Surtees, Sponge’s Sp. Tour (1893), 219. The move of the hounds caused a rush of gentlemen to their horses, and there was the usual scramblings up, and fidgetings, and funkings, and who-o-hayings and drawings of girths, and taking up of curbs, and lengthening and shortening of stirrups.
