Dipping something briefly into liquid, or in basketball, slamming the ball forcefully through the hoop.
From the verb 'dunk,' likely derived from Low German 'dunken' meaning to dip. The word entered English in the late 1800s and gained prominence with the rise of basketball in the early 1900s, where it acquired the sports meaning.
The basketball 'dunk' might have come from the same root as dunking cookies in milk—both involve a quick, forceful immersion, and the sports term proved so powerful that many people forget about the original cookie-dunking meaning!
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