A friend passed along the following bit of apocrypha. It seems that during the last century, the Japanese port city of Yokohama was home to a street named Hunko-dori. The sailor who could find his way to Hunko-dori could almost certainly find his way back to his ship, since Hunko-dori led directly to the waterfront. Gobs and swabs and Jack-tars who might have overindulged in saki while ashore would come upon the street with delight; and thus, our wag claims, Hunko-dori became a byword for "quite satisfactory; fine."

Landlubbers and folks who enjoy a good yarn may believe this is how hunky-dory came to be coined, but etymologists think this purported coinage smells a bit -- well, fishy.

It's true that the term hunky-dory first appeared in print in 1866, around the time that Westerners began docking at the Yokohama port. But there's no evidence that any Hunko-dori waterfront street ever existed. So how did hunky-dory come to be coined? We admit that tale isn't nearly as satisfying. Dictionary editors trace hunky-dory to hunk, a now-obsolete English dialect word meaning "home base," plus dory, a word of unknown provenance.