wharf

From Middle English [Term?], from Old English hwearf (“heap, embankment, wharf”); related to Old English hweorfan (“to turn”), Old Saxon hwerf (whence German Werft), Dutch werf, Old High German hwarb (“a turn”), hwerban (“to turn”), Old Norse hvarf (“circle”), and Ancient Greek καρπός (karpós, “wrist”).

• (General American) enPR: wôrf, IPA^(key): /wɔɹf/
• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: wôf, IPA^(key): /wɔːf/
• (without the wine–whine merger) enPR: hwôrf, IPA^(key): /hwɔɹf/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)f

wharf (plural wharves or wharfs)

1. A man-made landing place for ships on a shore or river bank.
   • Bancroft

     Commerce pushes its wharves into the sea.

   • Tennyson

     Out upon the wharfs they came, / Knight and burgher, lord and dame.

2. The bank of a river, or the shore of the sea.
   • Shakespeare

     the fat weed that roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf

• (landing place): dock; quay

• (landing place): jetty; pier; staithe, staith (Northern England)

wharf (third-person singular simple present wharfs, present participle wharfing, simple past and past participle wharfed)

1. (transitive) To secure by a wharf.
2. (transitive) To place on a wharf.

• dock