brock

See also: Brock and Bröck

English

Etymology

From Middle English brok, from Old English broc (“badger”), related to Danish brok (“badger”); both probably originally from a Celtic source akin to Irish broc, Welsh broch, Cornish brogh and thus ultimately from Proto-Celtic *brokkos.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /bɹɒk/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /bɹɑk/
• Rhymes: -ɒk

Noun

brock (plural brocks)

1. (UK) a male badger.
   • 1756 [1704], Ben Jonson, “The Tale of a Tub”, in Peter Whalley, editor, The Works of Ben Jonson‎^[1], page 108:

     Or with pretence of chasing thence the brock,
     Send in a cur to worry the whole flock.

2. (archaic, possibly obsolete) A brocket, a stag between two and three years old.
   • 1833, “Stag”, in The Sportsman’s Cabinet, and Town and Country Magazine‎^[2], page 417:

     By sportsmen the stag is called, the first year, a calf or hind-calf ; the second year, a knobber ; the third, a brock ; the fourth, a staggard ; the fifth, a stag ; the sixth, a hart.

3. (obsolete) A dirty, stinking fellow.

Verb

brock (third-person singular simple present brocks, present participle brocking, simple past and past participle brocked)

1. To taunt.
   • 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming-Pool Library, paperback edition, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN, page 112:

     Then other boys noticed that he had a softness for me, and brocked us both, so that I, who had been as unconscious as ever of anything erotic, suddenly learnt what was going on &, by some profound power of suggestion, what my feelings actually were.

Anagrams

• Borck

Manx

Alternative forms

• broc

Etymology

From Middle Irish brocc, from Proto-Celtic *brokkos (“badger”) (compare Welsh broch).

Noun

brock m (genitive singular brock, plural brockyn)

1. badger

Mutation

Manx mutation
Radical	Lenition	Eclipsis
brock	vrock	mrock
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Scots

Etymology 1

Old Scots brok or broke, from Old English broc, Scottish Gaelic broc (“badger”).

Noun

brock (plural brocks)

1. badger
2. a despised person
   • 1833, James Hogg, The Brownie of Bodsbeck, page 13:

     He wantit to wheedle my wife out o’ ilk thing she had, an’ to kiss my daughter too, if he could. Vile brock!

     He wished to talk my wife out of everything she had, and to kiss my daughter too, if he could. Vile blackguard!

Etymology 2

From Old English gebroc (“fragment”), from brecan (“to break”).

Noun

brock (plural brocks)

1. leftovers, scraps of bread or meat
2. rubbish, (especially) something broken
3. something or someone of little worth, small potatoes

   I neither got stock nor brock ― I have nothing, great or small.