clock
English


Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /klɒk/Category:English 1-syllable words#CLOCKCategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#CLOCK
Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#CLOCKAudio (Received Pronunciation): (file) - (General American) enPR: kläk, IPA(key): /klɑk/Category:English 1-syllable words#CLOCKCategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#CLOCK
Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#CLOCKAudio (General American): (file) - (Liverpool) IPA(key): [kl̥ɒχ]Category:English terms with IPA pronunciation#CLOCK
- Rhymes: -ɒkCategory:Rhymes:English/ɒk#CLOCKCategory:Rhymes:English/ɒk/1 syllable#CLOCK
Etymology 1
First use appears c. 1370. From Middle EnglishCategory:English terms inherited from Middle English#CLOCKCategory:English terms derived from Middle English#CLOCK clokke, clok, cloke (“clock”), from Middle DutchCategory:English terms derived from Middle Dutch#CLOCK clocke (“bell, clock”), from Old DutchCategory:English terms derived from Old Dutch#CLOCK *klokka, from Medieval LatinCategory:English terms derived from Medieval Latin#CLOCK clocca (“bell, clock, cloak”), probably of CelticCategory:English terms derived from Celtic languages#CLOCK origin, from Proto-CelticCategory:English terms derived from Proto-Celtic#CLOCK *klokkos (“bell”) (compare Welsh cloch (“bell”), Old Irish cloc (“bell, clock”)), either onomatopoeicCategory:English onomatopoeias#CLOCK or from Proto-Indo-EuropeanCategory:English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European#CLOCK *klek- (“to laugh, cackle”) (compare Proto-Germanic *hlahjaną (“to laugh”)). Cognate with Old English clucge (“bell”), Saterland Frisian Klokke (“bell, clock”), Dutch klok (“clock, bell”), Low German Klock (“bell, clock”), German Glocke (“bell”), Danish and Norwegian klokke (“clock, bell”), Faroese klokka (“clock, bell”), Icelandic klukka (“clock, bell”), Swedish klocka (“clock, bell”), Asturian llueca (“cowbell”), Galician and Portuguese choca (“cowbell”), Doublet of cloak and clocheCategory:English doublets#CLOCK.
Alternative forms
- CLK (contraction used in electronics)
Noun
clock (countable and uncountable, plural clocks)Category:English lemmas#CLOCKCategory:English nouns#CLOCKCategory:English uncountable nouns#CLOCKCategory:English countable nouns#CLOCKCategory:English countable nouns#CLOCKCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#CLOCKCategory:Pages with entries#CLOCKCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLOCK
- A chronometer, an instrument that measures time, particularly the time of day.
- When the clock says midnight.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto II”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC:
- The seasons bring the flower again,Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
And bring the firstling to the flock;
And in the dusk of thee, the clock
Beats out the little lives of men.
- 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 163:
- An interesting feature of the church is the invisible clock, which you can hear thumping away as you enter. Constructed in 1525, it is one of the oldest timepieces in England. It chimes the hours and the quarters, and every three hours it plays a hymn. But it has no faces.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 1995, Richard Klein, “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.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- (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.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- (BritishCategory:British English#CLOCK) The odometer of a motor vehicle.
- This car has over 300,000 miles on the clock.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- (electronicsCategory:en:Electronics#CLOCK) 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.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- We let the guys use the shop's tools and equipment for their own projects as long as they're off the clock.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- (computingCategory:en:Computing#CLOCK, informalCategory:English informal terms#CLOCK) 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.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 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.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- (uncountableCategory:English uncountable nouns#CLOCK) A luck-based patience or solitaire card game with the cards laid out to represent the face of a clock.
- Synonym: clock patience
- (UKCategory:British English#CLOCK, obsoleteCategory:English terms with obsolete senses#CLOCK, thieves' cantCategory:English Thieves' Cant#CLOCK) A watch (timepiece).
- Arthur Morrison, Chance of the Game
- But if the clock was a red 'un, and the opportunity undoubted; to be pinched in the Bow Road merely might well imply loss of caste in the mob, but nobody need be ashamed to be pinched anywhere for a gold watch, after all.
- Arthur Morrison, Chance of the Game
- (slangCategory:English slang#CLOCK) A face; the head.
Usage notes
- Clock originally denoted a mechanical timekeeping device that was able to mark the time with chimes or another sounding mechanism, distinguished from a timepiece which had no such mechanism and a horologe and other terms inclusive of sundials, clepsydras, and similar devices. Clock is now the general term for all timekeeping devices, inclusive of aspects of software that tracks and displays the time, but as a physical object it is still sometimes distinguished from a small portable watch and from nonmechanical timekeeping devices.
Synonyms
- (instrument used to measure or keep track of time): See chronometer
- (odometer of a motor vehicle): odometer
Derived terms
- 12-hour clock
- 24-hour clock, twenty-four-hour clock
- 400-day clock
- a broken clock is right twice a day
- Act of Parliament clock
- against the clock
- alarm clock
- alarum clock
- analog clock
- analogue clock
- anniversary clock
- around-the-clock
- around the clock
- a stopped clock is right twice a day
- astronomical clock
- atomic clock
- attoclock
- balloon clock
- banjo clock
- beat the clock
- beer clock
- bioclock
- biological clock
- black clock
- body clock
- bracket clock
- bum-clock
- bushman's clock
- caesium clock
- calendar clock
- carriage clock
- case clock
- chemical clock
- chess clock
- circadian clock
- clean someone's clock
- Clock
- clock app
- clock calm
- clockcase
- clock cycle
- clock down
- clock face, Clock Face
- clock-face timetable
- clock gable
- Clockgate
- clock generator
- clock golf
- clock hour
- clockhouse
- clock is running
- clock is ticking
- clock it
- clock jack
- clock-jobber
- clockless
- clocklike
- clockmaker
- clockmaking
- clock move
- clock paradox
- clock patience
- clockpunk
- clock radio
- clock rate
- clockroom
- clock signal
- clock skew
- clock speed
- clockspring
- clock star
- clocksucker
- clock system
- clock time
- clocktower
- clock tower
- clock vine
- clockward
- clockware
- clock-watch
- clock-watcher
- clock watcher
- clock-watching
- clockweight
- clockwinder
- clock wipe
- clockwise
- clockwork
- continuous clock
- cuckoo clock
- dandelion clock
- death clock
- digital clock
- Doomsday Clock
- drumhead clock
- eight-day clock
- epigenetic clock
- equation clock
- Etho hopper clock
- even a stopped clock is right twice a day
- face that would stop a clock
- fix someone's clock
- flip clock
- flog the clock
- floral clock
- flower clock
- game clock
- get one's clock cleaned
- grandfather clock
- grandfather's clock
- grandmother clock
- Horvath clock
- hydrogen maser atomic clock
- Jack o' the clock
- Japanese clock
- light clock
- logical clock
- longcase clock
- longitude clock
- master clock
- microbial clock
- milk the clock
- misclock
- molecular clock
- mystery clock
- o'clock
- off the clock
- of the clock
- on the clock
- optical lattice clock
- over-clock
- pendulum clock
- pigeon clock
- play 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
- Riefler clock
- round-the-clock
- round the clock
- run down the clock
- run out the clock
- run the clock down
- sand clock
- segmentation clock
- settler's clock
- shepherd's clock
- Shortt clock
- shot clock
- skeleton clock
- slave clock
- speaking clock
- star clock
- stop clock
- stopped clock illusion
- stop someone's clock
- stream clock
- striking clock
- synchronized clock
- talking clock
- tall-case clock
- the clock around
- ticking clock
- time clock
- time delay and integration clock
- townhall clock
- turn back the clock
- turn the clock back
- twenty-four hour clock
- vase clock
- vector clock
- wall clock
- wall-clock time
- watchclock
- watchman's clock
- waterclock
- water clock
- whatever winds your clock
- wind back the clock
- world clock
Descendants
- → Unami: këlak
Translations
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Verb
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clocking, simple past and past participle clocked)Category:English lemmas#CLOCKCategory:English verbs#CLOCKCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#CLOCKCategory:Pages with entries#CLOCKCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLOCK
- (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#CLOCK) To measure the duration of.
- Synonym: time
- (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#CLOCK) To measure the speed of.
- He was clocked at 155 miles per hour.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- 1996, Jon Byrell, Lairs, Urgers and Coat-Tuggers, Sydney: Ironbark, page 186:
- Dan Patch clocked a scorching 1:55.5 flat.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#CLOCK, slangCategory:English slang#CLOCK) To hit (someone) heavily.
- Synonyms: slug, smack, thump, whack
- When the boxer let down his guard, his opponent clocked him.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#CLOCK, informalCategory:English informal terms#CLOCK) To notice; to take notice of (someone or something).
- Coordinate terms: check out, scope out
- Clock the wheels on that car!Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- 2005, Jr. Aaron Bryant, Cupid Is Stupid, 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.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 2006, Lily Allen, “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,Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 2021, Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation, Random House, →ISBN:
- First it was only when I was with him—we would pass a pretty girl, I would notice her first, and my eyes would dart to his to see him clock her.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 2021 July 1, Nick Oldham, Scarred, Severn House Publishers Ltd, →ISBN:
- He made it to ten yards away. Still they hadn't clocked him. Five yards. He felt increasingly confident about grabbing the actual thief, even if it meant letting the other lad get away. Both were pretty scrawny kids, although the other one was quite a bit older, maybe twenty, […]Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 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).Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#CLOCK, informalCategory:English informal terms#CLOCK, with as) To recognize; to assess, register.
- I'd already clocked her as someone who couldn't reliably be believed when she spoke. And now this too!Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- 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.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#CLOCK, informalCategory:English informal terms#CLOCK) To identify (someone) as having some attribute (for example, being trans or gay).
- Synonym: read
- Once my transition was complete I considered moving to London, where I felt there was less chance of being clocked and a larger support network.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- 2018 September 14, Nicola Frost, Tom Selwyn, Travelling towards Home: Mobilities and Homemaking, Berghahn Books, →ISBN, page 23:
- Jaz said that the palpitations of fear he used to experience at the prospect of being publicly outed in the gurdwara dissipated after he clocked other gay Sikhs in there, even one who professed a Jat caste identity, he said – Jatness being associated with stereotypical dominant macho masculinity. He reflected that this was a major factor in his rapprochement with his […]Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 2019 September 1, Dani Nett, “For Trans Women, Silicone 'Pumping' Can Be A Blessing And A Curse”, in NPR:
- 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."Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 2022 February 1, Townsand Price-Spratlen, Addiction Recovery and Resilience: Faith-based Health Services in an African American Community, State University of New York Press, →ISBN:
- Jess was a sixty-something, short, White, bald man who could easily be "clocked" as gay.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 2022 March 1, Charlie Markbreiter, “"Other Trans People Make Me Dysphoric": Trans Assimilation and Cringe”, in The New Inquiry:
- 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.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- (BritishCategory:British English#CLOCK, slangCategory:English slang#CLOCK) To falsify the reading of the odometer of a vehicle.
- Synonyms: turn back (the vehicle's) clock, wind back (the vehicle's) clock
- I don't believe that car has done only 40,000 miles. It's been clocked.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#CLOCK, BritishCategory:British English#CLOCK, New ZealandCategory:New Zealand English#CLOCK, AustraliaCategory:Australian English#CLOCK, slangCategory:English slang#CLOCK) To beat a video game.
- Have you clocked that game yet?Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- (ambitransitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#CLOCKCategory:English intransitive verbs#CLOCK, chiefly African-American VernacularCategory:African-American Vernacular English#CLOCK and LGBTQ slangCategory:English LGBTQ slang#CLOCK) To expose or attack someone, typically in a targeted and insulting manner.
- Did you hear what she said about my outfit? She kind of clocked me.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- You clocked, that guy is always running his mouth.Category:English terms with usage examples#CLOCK
- 2013 April 30, @NICKIMINAJ, Twitter (post), archived from the original on 3 December 2025:
- Its always a good day when I can clock someone using the (made up word) "unlessen". I just...ch...Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 2020 November 11, @BhadDhad, Twitter (post), archived from the original on 3 December 2025:
- not ariana getting her ass clocked on the set of victoriousCategory:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 2025 September 23, @buffys, X (post), archived from the original on 3 December 2025:
- she just clocked all these mediocre menCategory:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
Derived terms
Translations
Category:Entries with translation boxes#CLOCK
|
Etymology 2
UncertainCategory:English terms with unknown etymologies#CLOCK; designs may have originally been bell-shaped and thus related to Etymology 1, above.
Noun
clock (plural clocks)Category:English lemmas#CLOCKCategory:English nouns#CLOCKCategory:English countable nouns#CLOCKCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#CLOCKCategory:Pages with entries#CLOCKCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLOCK
- 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:
- But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand,Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
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' hollyhocksCategory:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
An zome stockèns o' gramfer's a-knit wi' clocks
- 2004, Sheila McGregor, Traditional Scandinavian Knitting, Courier Dover, →ISBN, page 60:
- Most decoration involved the ankle clocks, and several are shown on p.15 in the form of charts.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- 2006, J. Munslow, Kathryn McKelvey, Fashion Source Book, →ISBN, page 231:
- Clocks: These are ornamental designs embroidered or woven on to the ankles of stockings.Category:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
- c. 1720, Jonathan Swift, An Essay on Modern Education:
- his stockings with silver clocks were ravished from himCategory:English terms with quotations#CLOCK
Translations
Verb
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clocking, simple past and past participle clocked)Category:English lemmas#CLOCKCategory:English verbs#CLOCKCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#CLOCKCategory:Pages with entries#CLOCKCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLOCK
- (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#CLOCK) To ornament (e.g. the side of a stocking) with figured work.
See also
Etymology 3
Noun
clock (plural clocks)Category:English lemmas#CLOCKCategory:English nouns#CLOCKCategory:English countable nouns#CLOCKCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#CLOCKCategory:Pages with entries#CLOCKCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLOCK
Etymology 4
From Middle EnglishCategory:English terms inherited from Middle English#CLOCKCategory:English terms derived from Middle English#CLOCK clokken, from Old EnglishCategory:English terms inherited from Old English#CLOCKCategory:English terms derived from Old English#CLOCK cloccian, ultimately imitativeCategory:English onomatopoeias#CLOCK; compare Dutch klokken, English cluck.
Verb
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clocking, simple past and past participle clocked)Category:English lemmas#CLOCKCategory:English verbs#CLOCKCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#CLOCKCategory:Pages with entries#CLOCKCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLOCK
- (ScotlandCategory:Scottish English#CLOCK, intransitiveCategory:English intransitive verbs#CLOCK, datedCategory:English dated terms#CLOCK) To make the sound of a hen; to cluck.
- (ScotlandCategory:Scottish English#CLOCK, intransitiveCategory:English intransitive verbs#CLOCK, datedCategory:English dated terms#CLOCK) To hatch.
Derived terms
Further reading
Time on Wikipedia.Wikipedia - “clock n.1 (the face)”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present.
Scots
Verb
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clockin, simple past and past participle clockit)Category:Scots lemmas#CLOCKCategory:Scots verbs#CLOCKCategory:Scots entries with incorrect language header#CLOCKCategory:Pages with entries#CLOCKCategory:Pages with 2 entries#CLOCK
- to hatch (an egg)
