Skip to content
OneKitly

dock

nounnounverbnounverbnouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//dɒk//
  • United States//dɑk//
  • Australia//dɔk//

Any of the genus Rumex of coarse weedy plants with small green flowers related to buckwheat, especially bitter dock (Rumex obtusifolius), and used as potherbs and in folk medicine, especially in curing nettle rash.

noun

  1. 1

    Any of the genus Rumex of coarse weedy plants with small green flowers related to buckwheat, especially bitter dock (Rumex obtusifolius), and used as potherbs and in folk medicine, especially in curing nettle rash.

    And vnder neath him his courageous ſteed, / The fierce Spumador trode them downe like docks […]

  2. 2

    A burdock plant, or the leaves of that plant.

Etymology

From Middle English dokke, from Old English docce, from Proto-West Germanic *dokkā, from Proto-Germanic *dukkǭ (compare Old Danish dokke (“water-dock”), West Flemish dokke, dokkebladeren (“coltsfoot, butterbur”)), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰew- (“dark”) (compare Latvian duga (“scum, slime on water”)).

noun

  1. 1

    The fleshy root of an animal's tail; specifically after clipping or cutting.

    The Dock is about 1 inch thick, and two inches broad, like an Apothecaries Spatule. Of what length the whole, is uncertain, this being only part of it, though it looks as if cut off near the Buttock

  2. 2

    obsoleteThe buttocks or anus.

    And on a Cuſhion ſtuffed with Flocks, / She clapt her dainty pair of Docks.

  3. 3

    A leather case used to cover the clipped or cut tail of a horse.

Etymology

A dog with a partially docked (etymology 2, verb sense 1) tail From Middle English dok (“trimmed hair, dock”), from Old English *docce, *docca (as in fingerdocce (“finger muscles”)), from Proto-West Germanic *dokkā, from Proto-Germanic *dukkǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeu-k- (“to spin, shake”). Compare Icelandic dokkur (“stumpy tail”), Low German Dokke (“bundle of straw”), West Frisian dok (“bunch, ball (twine)”), Albanian dak (“big ram”), Lithuanian dvė̃kti (“to breathe, wheeze”), dvãkas (“breath”), Sanskrit धुक्षति (dhukṣati, “to blow”). The verb is from Middle English dokken (“to cut short, dock, curtail”), derived from the noun.

verb

  1. 1

    To clip or cut off a section of an animal's tail; to practise a caudectomy.

    The Celebrity, by arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track.[…]Their example was followed by others at a time when the master of Mohair was superintending in person the docking of some two-year-olds, and equally invisible.

  2. 2

    To reduce (wages); to deduct from (someone).

    Her wages were docked by ten dollars.

    The team have been docked six points at Paris 2024 and Priestman received a one-year football ban from world governing body Fifa.

  3. 3

    informalTo reduce the wages of (a person).

    They docked me ten dollars for breaking the vase.

  4. 4

    To cut off, bar, or destroy.

    to dock an entail

  5. 5

    To pierce holes, as pricking dough with a fork, to prevent excessive rising in the oven.

noun

  1. 1

    A fixed structure attached to shore to which a vessel is secured when in port; usually for loading and unloading.

    With just the turn of a shoulder she indicated the water front, where, at the end of the dock on which they stood, lay the good ship, Mount Vernon, river packet, the black smoke already pouring from her stacks.

  2. 2

    The body of water next to and around a pier.

  3. 3

    The area of arrival and departure of a train in a railway station.

  4. 4

    A section of a hotel or restaurant.

    coffee dock

  5. 5

    A device designed as a base for holding a connected portable appliance for providing the necessary electrical charge for its autonomy, or as a hardware extension for additional capabilities.

  6. 6

    A toolbar that provides the user with a way of launching applications by their icons, and switching between running applications.

  7. 7

    An act or instance of docking; joining two things together.

  8. 8

    Variant of scene-dockEllipsis of scene-dock.

Etymology

A laptop docking (etymology 3, noun sense 5) station A GUI dock (etymology 3, noun sense 6) on Linux From Early Modern English meaning "area of mud in which a ship can rest at low tide, dock", borrowed from either Dutch dok (“dock, wharf”) or Middle Low German docke (“dock, wharf”), both from Middle Dutch docke (“port, harbour”), of uncertain origin. The original sense may have been "the furrow a grounded vessel makes in a mud bank". Compare Danish dok, Dutch dok, West Frisian dok, German Dock, Low German Dock, Swedish docka. Some sources link this word to an unattested Middle Dutch *docke (“watercourse, trench, canal”), which is a ghost word, only being inferred from Mediaeval Latin documents in the form of ducta, doctus, doccia (“conduit, canal”). However, if this theory is correct, then it would relate the word to Italian doccia (“drainpipe”), making dock a doublet of douche and duct. An alternative theory ties Middle Dutch docke to a North Germanic or Scandinavian source, notably Old Norse dǫkk, dökð (“depression in the landscape, pit, pool, trench”); compare Icelandic dökk, Norwegian dokk (“hollow, low ground”), Swedish dank (“marshy ground”). If so, this would make dock a doublet of dank.

verb

  1. 1

    To land at a harbour.

    On 28 February, for example, a US Navy ship docked in Nampo, the port for Pyongyang, with equipment for joint searches for remains of US soldiers missing from the 1950-1953 Korean War. China may look askance at the US and North Korean militaries working together like this.

  2. 2

    To join two moving items.

    to dock spacecraft

    A “moving platform” scheme[…]is more technologically ambitious than maglev trains even though it relies on conventional rails. Local trains would use side-by-side rails to roll alongside intercity trains and allow passengers to switch trains by stepping through docking bays.

  3. 3

    To move a spaceship into its dock/berth under its own power.

  4. 4

    slangIn male homosexual sex, to engage in docking, the inserting of the tip of one participant's penis into the foreskin of the other participant.

  5. 5

    To drag a user interface element (such as a toolbar) to a position on screen where it snaps into place.

  6. 6

    To place (an electronic device) in its dock.

    I docked the laptop and allowed it to recharge for an hour.

noun

  1. 1

    Part of a courtroom where the accused sits.

Etymology

Originally criminal slang; from or akin to obsolete Dutch (West Flemish) dok (“cage, hutch”) or docke (“cage”), possibly from Middle Dutch docke (“block, wooden object”), related to Middle Low German docke (“tenon, banister rod, bench cheek, side panel of a pew”), of uncertain origin.

Forms

plural
docks
past tense
docked
past participle
docked
present participle
docking
third person singular
docks
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).