I keep hearing about this honk thing.
Was this at one point a classical flute thing?
How did it enter ITM?
Is it because ITM likes to be based in D?
If you think about playing flute as a solo instrument, by itself driving a group of dancers with a strong, rhythmic beat audible in a room full of shuffling and tapping feet, the answer probably suggests itself.
So is the honk for volume’s sake alone?
I guess it became characteristic and stylistic and everything at a certain point…
Play the fife?
No, not volume alone. And not the fife! 
You’re focusing on the wrong thing.
Think of the difference between: “clap clap clap clap” and “clap CLAP clap CLAP”
The CLAPs are louder, but the motivation is rhythm, not volume per se. Honking is a natural result of breath-pushing notes to create a rhythmic as well as melodic contour. Because it’s dance music. Honking is how a flute responds, and learning to control it turns it into a feature not a bug. And as Othannen says, it takes on a stylistic value as technical element in its own right.
This is really no different from any ITM instrument, no? You exploit whatever capabilities the instrument gives you to create the rhythmic element in your playing. And for dance music, if you’re not constantly thinking of your instrument as a rhythm device, yer doing it wrong. 
Well, that’s my view, anyway …
Adding: If you’re thinking of the low D honk, I’d guess that’s been influenced by the hard D on the pipes.
Is the “honk” a type of articulation?
If you have some example of how the pipes work, I’d like to hear it.
The fife was an ITM instrument.
No, honk is not a type of articulation as it can be a sustained tonal characteristic. Even players who lack the embouchure skills to sustain that reedy, partials laden, on the edge of breaking to the harmonic yet richly fundamental tone can get it at least some of the time by virtue of strong breath attack when using breath pulses for rhythm as described, but it can be achieved and sustained without the attack too. As has often been written about, it seems from the descriptions to be a style of playing derived from the Nicholson ideal of British (English) flute tone through the C19th and preserved in Ireland, to some extent even today among classical players, when it was gradually superseded in England by the French style from the 2nd quarter of the C20th. To some extent the tone ideal is linked with the instruments - 2nd quarter C19th design of conoid flutes to achieve that sound and being good at doing so, carried forward in the subsequent trad use of those instruments… where that sound quality is also, as has been mentioned, well suited to and fostered by maximum volume and driving rhythmic playing for dancing.
Thanks, Jem. That’s considerably more erudite than my “clap clap”. 
In terms of rhythmic emphasis, it can be, but only depending on how you define “articulation”, and on how you use the honk. It’s very useful in pedal point when you want to emphasise the rhythm of the tune; if ever you’ve had to play flute as the sole instrument for a céilí - and I have, and more than once - it comes in handy, and no lie.
Here’s a vid of Jerry O’Sullivan playing a couple of hornpipes. In the first, Chief O’Neill’s Favorite, Jerry hits a really nice hard bottom D at the ends of the sections - a good example of the idea. However, I’m not sure that “articulation” is the point at all in this case. It is a means of emphasis-by-timbre, if you will, but not really necessary to the rhythm or the articulation, which yer man has in spades whether he uses the hard D or not.
i’d have to agree with Nanohedron, i think it can be a kind of articulation… i was just reading in Gary Larsen’s tome about how Micho Russell effects a roll on the bottom D by using a “honk” to effect the tap/strike. pretty cool. i can’t do it yet, but i’m working on it.
i think what Jem is talking about is what i’ve seen described as this board as “buzz” (as opposed to “honk”). i think of honk as the breath pulse on the downbeat of a phrase or finishing off a phrase; buzz is the sustained tonal quality of pushing a flute to get that resonate, reedy quality.
that’s just how i distinguish between them though. if someone has a more authoritative source, i’m interested…
???
cheers,
eric
Mmm, I don’t think I’ve encountered the term “buzz” applied to flute tone, even ITM strong, reedy tone, in an approbatory way, and it certainly isn’t a term I’ve noticed bandied about on this forum! We often refer to honk, however, and I don’t think we tend to use it exclusively for rhythmic pushes, though of course it includes that use/effect which I said in my previous post. Certainly when I use the term I’m referring to tone quality rather than anything else. “A honk” on a flute may well mean a rhythmic push using strong low register tone, but “s/he can make a flute honk” or “that flute can certainly honk” are references to a tone colour achieved/able, whether short and emphasising rhythm or sustained.
Naturally, if one has a good strong, honky tone, then pedal point passages as mentioned by Nano, where the low pedal note tends to be on the off-beat, produce a striking effect by virtue of the higher on-beat notes being rhythmically emphasised by their position in the metrical structure but the strength of the repeated low notes with that tone also creates a syncopated emphasis, simply (!) by dropping to them (without pushing them) the dominant tone (especially of a strong low D) making them prominent.
Point of clarity, then: that’s entirely what I have in mind when I use the word, for to me “honk” comes with a time limit. Since you mention it, I can see using it as descriptive of a general quality, but honestly that usage never occurred to me before and it doesn’t work for me personally; instead I use “reediness”, or the like.
All of a sudden it occurs to me that we should ask I.D.10-t what HE means! Oh, wait. Right. He’s the one who asked what it was in the first place, sort of. I guess we’re hashing that out, aren’t we.
Wasn’t he asking what it meant…?
And doesn’t our discussion thus far just raise that archetypal semantic difficulty? i.e. different folk use/envisage the same word, even concept, differently. Even when there is demonstrably tolerable consensus over usage (we ain’t there on this one yet!) every individual has their own nuanced interpretation… and no-one else will quite understand perfectly what they meant when they said something… (That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it - and if you disagree, well, you didn’t/can’t understand me… and if you agree, well… 
)
On a separate part of the OP query (the classical Q), here is a link to a website that deals in some detail with the later (post Bohm) manifestations of the “English School”. I’ve linked to the most relevant page, but the rest of the website is worth perusal. that, however, does not deal with the Nicholson issue from the early C19th - often discussed here and dealt with admirably by both Rick Wilson (see also elsewhere on his site) and Terry McGee.
See above…
Cross posted, Nano - you got your edit in first! See also my edits/addition.
Gawd. This is getting ugly.
So, yeah, about that:
And how many times is it now that we have all gone 'round and 'round about what “nyaah” is, for that matter?
fraught 
I was thinking more in the sense of “galumphing”.