clock

Meanings

Noun

• An instrument that measures or keeps track of time; a non-wearable timepiece.
• A common noun relating to an instrument that measures or keeps track of time.
• The odometer of a motor vehicle.
• An electrical signal that synchronizes timing among digital circuits of semiconductor chips or modules.
• The seed head of a dandelion.
• A time clock.
• A CPU clock cycle, or T-state.
• A pattern near the heel of a sock or stocking.
• A large beetle, especially the European dung beetle (Geotrupes stercorarius (species)).

Verb

• To measure the duration of.
• To measure the speed of.
• To hit (someone) heavily.
• To take notice of; to realise; to recognize someone or something
• To falsify the reading of the odometer of a vehicle.
• To beat a video game.
• To ornament (e.g. the side of a stocking) with figured work.
• To make the sound of a hen; to cluck.
• To hatch.

Related

Similar words

• timepiece
• odometer

Origin

• 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, Old Irish cloc), either onomatopoeic or from Proto-Indo-European *klek- ("to laugh, cackle") (compare Proto-Germanic *hlahjaną ("to laugh")).
• Related to Old English clucge, Saterland Frisian Klokke ("bell; clock"), Low German Klock ("bell, clock"), German Glocke, Swedish klocka.
• Doublet of cloak.
• Origin uncertain; designs may have originally been bell-shaped and thus related to Etymology 1, above.
• Old English cloccian ultimately imitative; compare Dutch klokken, English cluck.