clock
See also: Clock
EnglishEdit
PronunciationEdit
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /klɒk/
- (General American) enPR: kläk, IPA(key): /klɔk/, /klɑk/
- (Scouse) IPA(key): [kl̥ɒχ]
Audio (UK) (file) Audio (US) (file) - Rhymes: -ɒk
Etymology 1Edit
c. 1350–1400, Middle English clokke, clok, cloke, from Middle Dutch clocke (“bell, clock”), from Old Dutch *klokka, from Medieval Latin clocca, probably of Celtic origin, from Proto-Celtic *klokkos (“bell”) (compare Welsh cloch, Old Irish cloc), either onomatopoeic or from Proto-Indo-European *klek- (“to laugh, cackle”) (compare Proto-Germanic *hlahjaną (“to laugh”)).
Related to Old English clucge, Dutch klok, Saterland Frisian Klokke (“bell; clock”), Low German Klock (“bell, clock”), German Glocke, Swedish klocka.
Alternative formsEdit
- CLK (contraction used in electronics)
NounEdit
clock (countable and uncountable, plural clocks)
- An instrument that measures or keeps track of time; a non-wearable timepiece.
- 1995, Klein, Richard, “Introduction”, in Cigarettes are sublime, Paperback edition, Durham: Duke University Press, published 1993, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 8:
- In the June days of 1848 Baudelaire reports seeing revolutionaries (he might have been one of them) going through the streets of Paris with rifles, shooting all the clocks.
- (attributive) A common noun relating to an instrument that measures or keeps track of time.
- A 12-hour clock system; an antique clock sale; Acme is a clock manufacturer.
- (Britain) The odometer of a motor vehicle.
- This car has over 300,000 miles on the clock.
- (electronics) An electrical signal that synchronizes timing among digital circuits of semiconductor chips or modules.
- The seed head of a dandelion.
- A time clock.
- I can't go off to lunch yet: I'm still on the clock.
- We let the guys use the shop's tools and equipment for their own projects as long as they're off the clock.
- (computing, informal) A CPU clock cycle, or T-state.
- 1984, The Journal of Forth Application and Research, volume 2, page 83:
- Executing a NEXT to code takes 7 clocks, or 1.05 microseconds.
- 1990, Joseph F. Traub; Barbara J. Grosz, Annual Review of Computer Science, page 180:
- The best schedule produced by any hardware algorithm takes 7 clocks, whereas the statically reordered code in Figure 1.2(b) takes only 5 clocks.
- (uncountable) A luck-based patience or solitaire card game with the cards laid out to represent the face of a clock.
- Synonym: clock patience
SynonymsEdit
- (instrument used to measure or keep track of time): timepiece
- (odometer of a motor vehicle): odometer
Derived termsEdit
- 12-hour clock
- 24-hour clock
- a broken clock is right twice a day
- Act of Parliament clock
- against the clock
- alarm clock
- analog clock
- analogue clock
- around-the-clock
- around the clock
- a stopped clock is right twice a day
- atomic clock
- balloon clock
- beat the clock
- biological clock
- black clock
- body clock
- bracket clock
- bum-clock
- bushman's clock
- caesium clock
- carriage clock
- case clock
- chemical clock
- chess clock
- circadian clock
- clean someone's clock
- Clock
- clock calm
- clockcase
- clock cycle
- clock down
- clock face, Clock Face
- clock-face timetable
- clock gable
- clock generator
- clock golf
- clock hour
- clockhouse
- clock is running
- clock is ticking
- clock jack
- clock-jobber
- clockless
- clocklike
- clockmaker
- clock paradox
- clock patience
- clockpunk
- clock radio
- clock rate
- clock signal
- clock speed
- clockspring
- clock star
- clock tower
- clock vine
- clockward
- clock-watch
- clock-watcher
- clock watcher
- clock-watching
- clockweight
- clockwinder
- clockwise
- clockwork
- continuous clock
- cuckoo clock
- dandelion clock
- death clock
- digital clock
- drumhead clock
- eight-day clock
- epigenetic clock
- face that would stop a clock
- flog the clock
- flower clock
- game clock
- grandfather clock
- grandfather's clock
- grandmother clock
- hydrogen maser atomic clock
- Jack o' the clock
- light clock
- longcase clock
- longitude clock
- master clock
- microbial clock
- milk the clock
- molecular clock
- o'clock
- off the clock
- on the clock
- over-clock
- pendulum clock
- pocket clock
- pulsar clock
- punch clock
- put the clock back
- put the clock forward
- quartz clock
- quartz-crystal clock
- race against the clock
- radio alarm clock
- radio clock
- ride the clock
- round-the-clock
- round the clock
- run down the clock
- run out the clock
- run the clock down
- segmentation clock
- settler's clock
- shepherd's clock
- shot clock
- slave clock
- speaking clock
- star clock
- stop clock
- stop someone's clock
- stream clock
- synchronized clock
- talking clock
- tall-case clock
- ticking clock
- time clock
- turn back the clock
- turn the clock back
- vase clock
- wall clock
- watchman's clock
- water clock
- wind back the clock
- world clock
TranslationsEdit
instrument to measure or keep track of time
|
odometer
|
electrical signal
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
VerbEdit
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clocking, simple past and past participle clocked)
- (transitive) To measure the duration of.
- Synonym: time
- (transitive) To measure the speed of.
- 1996, Jon Byrell, Lairs, Urgers and Coat-Tuggers, Sydney: Ironbark, page 186:
- Dan Patch clocked a scorching 1:55.5 flat.
- He was clocked at 155 miles per hour.
- (transitive, slang) To hit (someone) heavily.
- (transitive, slang) To take notice of; to realise; to recognize (someone or something).
- Clock the wheels on that car!
- He finally clocked that there were no more cornflakes.
- Synonyms: check out, scope out
- 1988, “Nobody Beats the Biz”, in Goin' Off, performed by Biz Markie:
- Pardon the way that I be talking ’bout the places I be rocking
I love to perform for the people that be clocking
- 2000, Phil Austin, Naugahide Days: The Lost Island Stories of Thomas Wood Briar[1], page 109:
- Bo John and I twisted our heads around as Miranda braked over to the gravelly shoulder, let the Scout wheeze to a stop. She was climbing out, hurrying back to whatever had caught her eye. Bo John leered into the door mirror, clocking her flouncing, leggy strut.
- 2005, Jr. Aaron Bryant, Cupid Is Stupid[2], page 19:
- It is true. Carmen is an official gold digger. In fact, she is an instructor at the school of gold digging. Hood rats have been clocking her style for years. Wanting to pull the players she pulled, and wishing they had the looks she had.
- 2006, Ken Bruen, Dublin Noir: The Celtic Tiger Vs. the Ugly American[3], page 36:
- And he waits till I extend my hand, the two fingers visibly crushed. He clocks them, I say, "Phil."
- 2006, Lily Allen (lyrics and music), “Knock 'Em Out”:
- Cut to the pub on a lads night out, / Man at the bar cos it was his shout, / Clocks this bird and she looks OK, / Caught him looking and she walks his way,
- 2021 December 29, Stephen Roberts, “Stories and facts behind railway plaques: Lancaster (1860)”, in RAIL, number 947, page 58:
- I had just long enough at Lancaster to clock another plaque to a great Victorian railway engineer, Joseph Locke (1805-60).
- (transgender slang) To identify (someone) as being transgender.
- A trans person may be able to easily clock other trans people.
- Synonym: read
- 2017 April 26, Katelyn Burns, “I'm A Trans Mom, & This Was My Style Journey”, in Romper[4]:
- For me, makeup was like armor. I figured that if I applied it well enough, people wouldn't be as likely to clock me as a trans woman.
- 2019 September 1, Dani Nett, “For Trans Women, Silicone 'Pumping' Can Be A Blessing And A Curse”, in NPR[5]:
- Consuella Lopez, the director of operations and housing at Casa Ruby, remembers. "The more passable your body was, the less bullying you'd get, the more chances of you getting a regular job at a regular place without somebody clocking you."
- 2020 January 15, Princess Weekes, “Beauty Guru Nikkie Tutorials Came Out as a Trans Woman, but Under Distressing Circumstances”, in The Mary Sue[6]:
- These issues are not a game, and it is gross to use someone's coming out story as a way of testing your ability to "clock" trans women.
- 2022 March 1, Charlie Markbreiter, “"Other Trans People Make Me Dysphoric": Trans Assimilation and Cringe”, in The New Inquiry[7]:
- Quarantine had thrown a new wrench "do not perceive me" discourse, but trans people have arguably always had a messy relationship to being perceived. We avoid it, and yet we also juice our lives to be seen. Getting clocked feels bad, but being hot feels good.
- (Britain, slang) To falsify the reading of the odometer of a vehicle.
- (transitive, Britain, New Zealand, slang) To beat a video game.
- Have you clocked that game yet?
Derived termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
measure the duration of
|
measure the speed of
|
slang: take notice of
|
slang: falsify the reading of the odometer of a vehicle
Etymology 2Edit
Uncertain; designs may have originally been bell-shaped and thus related to Etymology 1, above.
NounEdit
clock (plural clocks)
- A pattern near the heel of a sock or stocking.
- 1882, W.S. Gilbert, “When you're lying awake”, in Iolanthe, or The Peer and the Peri[8]:
- But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand,
and you find you're as cold as an icicle,
In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks),
crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle
- 1894, William Barnes, “Grammer's Shoes”, in Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect, page 110:
- She'd a gown wi' girt flowers lik' hollyhocks
An zome stockèns o' gramfer's a-knit wi' clocks
- c. 1720, Jonathan Swift, An Essay on Modern Education
- his stockings with silver clocks were ravished from him
TranslationsEdit
pattern near heel of a sock or stocking
VerbEdit
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clocking, simple past and past participle clocked)
- (transitive) To ornament (e.g. the side of a stocking) with figured work.
See alsoEdit
Etymology 3Edit
NounEdit
clock (plural clocks)
- A large beetle, especially the European dung beetle (Geotrupes stercorarius).
Etymology 4Edit
Old English cloccian ultimately imitative; compare Dutch klokken, English cluck.
VerbEdit
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clocking, simple past and past participle clocked)
- (Scotland, intransitive, dated) To make the sound of a hen; to cluck.
- (Scotland, intransitive, dated) To hatch.
Derived termsEdit
Further readingEdit
ScotsEdit
VerbEdit
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clockin, simple past clockit, past participle clockit)
- to hatch (an egg)