clock
See also: Clock
English
The clock at Big Ben.
The clock of a dandelion.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /klɒk/
- (General American) enPR: kläk, IPA(key): /klɑk/
Audio (UK) (file) Audio (US) (file) - Rhymes: -ɒk
Etymology 1
c. 1350–1400, Middle English clokke, clok, cloke, from Middle Dutch clocke (“bell, clock”), from Old Northern French cloque (“bell”), from Medieval Latin clocca, probably of Celtic origin, from Proto-Celtic *klokkos (“bell”) (compare Welsh cloch, Irish clog), from Proto-Indo-European *klēg-, *klōg- (onomatopoeia).
Related to Old English clucge, Saterland Frisian Klokke (“bell; clock”), Low German Klock (“bell, clock”), German Glocke, Swedish klocka. Related to laugh.
Alternative forms
- CLK (contraction used in electronics)
Noun
clock (plural clocks)
- An instrument used to measure or keep track of time; a non-portable timepiece.
- 1995, Klein, Richard, “Introduction”, in Cigarettes are sublime, Paperback edition, Durham: Duke University Press, published 1993, →ISBN, OCLC 613939086, 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.
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- (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.
- 1984, The Journal of Forth Application and Research (volume 2, page 83)
Synonyms
Derived terms
- 12-hour clock
- 24-hour clock
- a broken clock is right twice a day
- against the clock
- alarm clock
- analog clock
- around the clock
- a stopped clock is right twice a day
- atomic clock
- balloon clock
- beat the clock
- biological clock
- body clock
- carriage clock
- case clock
- chemical clock
- chess clock
- clean someone's clock
- clockcase
- clock face
- clock generator
- clockhouse
- clock is running
- clock is ticking
- clock-jobber
- clockless
- clocklike
- clockmaker
- clock paradox
- clockpunk
- clock radio
- clock signal
- clock speed
- clockspring
- clock tower
- clock vine
- clockward
- clock-watcher
- clock watcher
- clock-watching
- clockweight
- clockwinder
- clockwise
- clockwork
- continuous clock
- cuckoo clock
- dandelion clock
- death clock
- digital clock
- eight-day clock
- face that would stop a clock
- flower clock
- game clock
- grandfather clock
- grandfather's clock
- Jack o' the clock
- light clock
- longcase clock
- longitude clock
- o'clock
- off the clock
- on the clock
- over-clock
- pendulum clock
- punch clock
- put the clock back
- put the clock forward
- quartz clock
- quartz-crystal clock
- radio alarm clock
- radio clock
- round the clock
- round-the-clock
- run down the clock
- run out the clock
- run the clock down
- segmentation clock
- shot clock
- slave clock
- speaking clock
- stream clock
- synchronized clock
- talking clock
- tall-case-clock
- time clock
- turn back the clock
- vase clock
- wall clock
- watchman's clock
- water clock
- wind back the clock
- work against the clock
- work around the clock
- world clock
Translations
instrument to measure or keep track of time
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odometer
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electrical signal
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Verb
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clocking, simple past and past participle clocked)
- (transitive) To measure the duration of.
- (transitive) To measure the speed of.
- He was clocked at 155 miles per hour.
- (transitive, slang) To hit (someone) heavily.
- When the boxer let down his guard, his opponent clocked him.
- (slang) To take notice of; to realise; to recognize someone or something
- 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, 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.
- 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,
- Clock the wheels on that car!
- He finally clocked that there were no more cornflakes.
- A trans person may be able to easily clock other trans people.
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- (Britain, slang) To falsify the reading of the odometer of a vehicle.
- I don't believe that car has done only 40,000 miles. It's been clocked.
- (transitive, New Zealand, slang) To beat a video game.
- Have you clocked that game yet?
Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations
measure the duration of
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measure the speed of
slang: take notice of
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slang: falsify the reading of the odometer of a vehicle
Etymology 2
Origin uncertain; designs may have originally been bell-shaped and thus related to Etymology 1, above.
Noun
clock (plural clocks)
- A pattern near the heel of a sock or stocking.
- 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
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Jonathan Swift to this entry?)
Translations
Verb
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.
Noun
clock (plural clocks)
- A large beetle, especially the European dung beetle (Geotrupes stercorarius).
Etymology 4
Old English cloccian; compare Dutch klokken.
Verb
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clocking, simple past and past participle clocked)
Derived terms
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for clock in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)
Scots
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