hulk

A large ship used for transportation; (more generally) a large ship that is difficult to manoeuvre.archaic

• Light boates ſaile ſwift, though greater hulkes draw deepe.
• Their ſhips thus ſet on ſhore (to fruſtrate their deſire) / Thoſe Daniſh Hulkes became the food of Engliſh fire.

A non-functional but floating ship, usually stripped of equipment and rigging, and often put to other uses such as accommodation or storage.broadly

• They could see the lighthouse shining on Quarantine Island, and the green lights on the old coal hulks.

A large structure with a dominating presence.figuratively

• The sturdy trunk of Central Park Tower is rising nearby – a great glass hulk that will soon steal the crown for the most vertiginous residences on the planet.

A big (and possibly clumsy) person.figuratively

A big (and possibly clumsy) person.; An excessively muscled person.figuratively

To reduce (a ship) to a non-functional hulk.transitive

• In Fremantle very few vessels appear to have been reduced to hulks, and only one figure head Samuel Plimsoll, [Fig. 62] survives from a sailing ship hulked in 1904. [...] The Sarah Burnyeat was hulked in Albany in 1886, [...]
• No further additions were made to this group, and by 1729 the Rank was extinct (the last to be struck was the Ludlow, which had been hulked in 1719).

To temporarily house (goods, people, etc.) in such a hulk.transitive

To move (a large, hulking body).transitive

• This hearty, willing man had hulked his 354 pounds about the world, faithfully and deftly running presidential errands in Cuba, Panama, the Philippines, Rome, Russia, and Japan and China.
• A man with four children crowding like saplings around him whistles to wake up the elephant seal who has hulked his impossible body onto the beach.

To be a hulk, that is, a large, hulking, and often imposing presence.intransitive

• After one trip with them, he decided he couldn't stand to have bodyguards hulking around him wherever he went. He felt like an idiot walking along the aisles of the supermarket with eight lumpy men standing around [...]
• As the occupants stepped out, he hulked at them menacingly and asked them the traditional question. 'Can Ah help youse?'

Of a (large) person: to act or move slowly and clumsily.intransitive

• After a while he hulked up to where Erland sat, putting his hairy fist on the table and watching the boy work.
• Instead he hulked his way towards Kruger again as the crowd ooohd and aaahd at the prowess. The two men were about equal in height, but Matusak outweighed Kruger by about fifty pounds.

To remove the entrails of; to disembowel.dialectaltransitive

• And with this ſwaſhing blow, do you ſwear Prince; / I could hulk your Grace, and hang you up croſs-legg'd, / Like a Hare at a Poulters, and do this with this wiper.