puck

• enPR: pŭk, IPA^(key): /pʌk/
• Rhymes: -ʌk

From Middle English puke, from Old English pūca (“goblin, demon”), from Proto-Germanic *pūkô (“a goblin, spook”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pāug(')- (“brilliance, spectre”). Cognate with Old Norse púki (“devil”) (dialectal Swedish puke), Middle Low German spōk, spūk (“apparition, ghost”), German Spuk (“a haunting”). More at spook.

puck (plural pucks)

1. (now rare) A mischievous or hostile spirit. [from 10th c.]
   • 2017, Ronald Hutton, The Witch, Yale University Press 2018, p. 232:

     William Tyndale allotted this character a role, of leading nocturnal travellers astray as the puck had been said to do since Anglo-Saxon times and the goblin since the later medieval period.

• See goblin (hostile) and fairy (mischievous)

• puckish

From or influenced by Irish poc (“stroke in hurling, bag”). Compare poke (1861).

puck (third-person singular simple present pucks, present participle pucking, simple past and past participle pucked)

1. (chiefly Ireland) To hit, strike. [from 19th c.]

puck (plural pucks)

1. (ice hockey) A hard rubber disc; any other flat disc meant to be hit across a flat surface in a game. [from 19th c.]
   • 1886, Boston Daily Globe (28 February), p 2:

     In hockey a flat piece of rubber, say four inches long by three wide and about an inch thick, called a ‘puck’, is used.

2. (chiefly Canada) An object shaped like a puck. [from 20th c.]
   • 2004, Art Directors Annual, v 83, Rotovision, p 142:

     He reaches into the urinal and picks up the puck. He then walk over to the sink and replaces a bar of soap with the urinal puck.

3. (computing) A pointing device with a crosshair. [from 20th c.]
4. (hurling, camogie) A penalty shot.

• Hockey puck on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

puck c

1. puck