A person or thing that clunks; an old, unreliable car or machine that makes loud, heavy sounds when operating.
From clunk (to make a dull sound) plus -er (a suffix meaning 'one who' or 'thing that'). The -er suffix is one of English's most productive, applied to both animate and inanimate objects to create agent nouns. In this case, -er creates a noun for something that produces clunking sounds.
The word 'clunker' for an old car is uniquely American—it entered slang around the 1960s when rust-bucket cars were everywhere, and it perfectly captures both the physical reality (they make terrible sounds) and the emotional truth (frustration and affection). Now car enthusiasts proudly call their restored vintage cars 'clunkers.'
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