dock

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /dɒk/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /dɑk/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒk
• Homophones: doc, Doc; dark (non-rhotic, father-bother merger)

From Middle English dokke, from Old English docce, from Proto-West Germanic *dokkā, from Proto-Germanic *dukkǭ (compare Old Danish dokke (“water-dock”), West Flemish dokke, dokkebladeren (“coltsfoot, butterbur”)), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰew- (“dark”) (compare Latvian duga (“scum, slime on water”)).^[1][2]

dock (countable and uncountable, plural docks)

1. Any of the genus Rumex of coarse weedy plants with small green flowers related to buckwheat, especially bitter dock (Rumex obtusifolius), and used as potherbs and in folk medicine, especially in curing nettle rash.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 352:

     And vnder neath him his courageous ſteed, / The fierce Spumador trode them downe like docks […]

2. A burdock plant, or the leaves of that plant.

From Middle English dok (“trimmed hair, dock”), from Old English *docce, *docca (as in fingirdoccana (“finger muscles”, genitive plural)), from Proto-West Germanic *dokkā, from Proto-Germanic *dukkǭ (compare West Frisian dok (“bunch, ball (twine)”), Low German Dokke (“bundle of straw”), Icelandic dokkur (“stumpy tail”)), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeu-k- (“to spin, shake”) (compare Lithuanian dvė̃kti (“to breathe, wheeze”), dvãkas (“breath”), Albanian dak (“big ram”), Sanskrit धुक्षति (dhukṣati, “to blow”)).^[1]

The verb is from Middle English dokken (“to cut short, dock, curtail”), from the noun.

dock (plural docks)

1. The fleshy root of an animal's tail.
2. The part of the tail which remains after the tail has been docked.
   • 1681, Nehemiah Grew, Musæum Regalis Societatis. Or A Catalogue & Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities Belonging to the Royal Society and Preserved at Gresham Colledge. […], London: […] W. Rawlins, for the author, →OCLC:

     The Dock is about 1 inch thick, and two inches broad, like an Apothecaries Spatule. Of what length the whole, is uncertain, this being only part of it, though it looks as if cut off near the Buttock

3. (obsolete) The buttocks or anus.
   • 1665, Charles Cotton, Scarronnides:

     And on a Cuſhion ſtuffed with Flocks, / She clapt her dainty pair of Docks.

4. A leather case to cover the clipped or cut tail of a horse.

dock (third-person singular simple present docks, present participle docking, simple past and past participle docked)

1. (transitive) To cut off a section of an animal's tail, to practise a caudectomy.
   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, pages 58–59:

     The Celebrity, by arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track. […] Their example was followed by others at a time when the master of Mohair was superintending in person the docking of some two-year-olds, and equally invisible.

   • 2024 July 28, “Priestman 'heartbroken' by drone scandal as funding pulled”, in bbc.com‎^[2]:

     The team have been docked six points at Paris 2024 and Priestman received a one-year football ban from world governing body Fifa.

2. (transitive) To reduce (wages); to deduct from.

   Her wages were docked by ten dollars.

3. (transitive, informal) To reduce the wages of (a person).

   They docked me ten dollars for breaking the vase.

4. (transitive) To cut off, bar, or destroy.

   to dock an entail

From early modern English "area of mud in which a ship can rest at low tide, dock", borrowed from Dutch dok (“dock”) or Middle Low German docke (“dock, ship's dock”), both from Middle Dutch docke (“port, harbour, roadstead”), of uncertain origin. The original sense may have been "the furrow a grounded vessel makes in a mud bank".^[1] Compare modern Dutch dok, modern German Low German Dock, West Frisian dok, German Dock, Danish dok, Swedish docka.

Some sources link this word to an unattested Middle Dutch *docke (“watercourse, trench, canal”), which is a ghost word, only being inferred from Mediaeval Latin documents in the form of ducta, doctus, doccia (“conduit, canal”). However, if this theory is correct, then it would relate the word to Italian doccia (“drainpipe”), making dock a doublet of douche and duct.^[2]

An alternative theory ties Middle Dutch docke to a North Germanic/Scandinavian source, notably Old Norse dǫkk (“depression in the landscape, pit, pool, trench”), related to Norwegian dokk (“hollow, low ground”), Old Icelandic dökk, dökð (“pit, pool”), Swedish dank (“marshy ground”). If so, this would make dock a doublet of dank.

dock (plural docks)

1. (nautical) A fixed structure attached to shore to which a vessel is secured when in port.
   • 1910, Emerson Hough, “A Lady in Company”, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     With just the turn of a shoulder she indicated the water front, where, at the end of the dock on which they stood, lay the good ship, Mount Vernon, river packet, the black smoke already pouring from her stacks.

2. A structure attached to shore for loading and unloading vessels.
3. The body of water between two piers.
4. The place of arrival and departure of a train in a railway station.
5. A section of a hotel or restaurant.

   coffee dock

6. (electronics) A device designed as a base for holding a connected portable appliance such as a laptop computer (in this case, referred to as a docking station), or a mobile telephone, for providing the necessary electrical charge for its autonomy, or as a hardware extension for additional capabilities.
7. (graphical user interface) A toolbar that provides the user with a way of launching applications by their icons, and switching between running applications.
8. An act of docking; joining two things together.
9. (theater) Short for scene-dock.

• (body of water between piers): slip
• (A fixed structure attached to shore to which a vessel is secured when in port): darsena
• (structure for loading and unloading vessels): wharf, quay

• (structure at shore to which vessel is secured): mooring, moorage

dock (third-person singular simple present docks, present participle docking, simple past and past participle docked)

1. (intransitive) To land at a harbour.
   • 29 February 2012, Aidan Foster-Carter, BBC News North Korea: The denuclearisation dance resumes[3]

     On 28 February, for example, a US Navy ship docked in Nampo, the port for Pyongyang, with equipment for joint searches for remains of US soldiers missing from the 1950-1953 Korean War. China may look askance at the US and North Korean militaries working together like this.

2. To join two moving items.

   to dock spacecraft

   • 2013 June 1, “Ideas coming down the track”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 13 (Technology Quarterly):

     A “moving platform” scheme […] is more technologically ambitious than maglev trains even though it relies on conventional rails. Local trains would use side-by-side rails to roll alongside intercity trains and allow passengers to switch trains by stepping through docking bays.

3. (astronautics) To move a spaceship into its dock/berth under its own power.
4. (intransitive, sex) To engage in the sexual practice of docking (where the tip of one participant's penis is inserted into the foreskin of the other participant).
5. (transitive, graphical user interface) To drag a user interface element (such as a toolbar) to a position on screen where it snaps into place.
6. (transitive) To place (an electronic device) in its dock.

   I docked the laptop and allowed it to recharge for an hour.

Originally criminal slang; from or akin to obsolete Dutch (West Flemish) dok (“cage, hutch”) or docke (“cage”), from Middle Dutch docke (“coop for animals”), from Proto-Germanic *dukją, *dugją (“enclosed or contained space”) (compare Old High German dogga (“barrel”), Middle Low German docke (“small house”), of uncertain origin, possibly borrowed from a non-Indo-European substrate.

dock (plural docks)

2. (law) Part of a courtroom where the accused sits.

• in the dock
• jump the dock

From Etymology 3 above, referring to puncturing the dough to shorten or prevent excessive rising during baking, similar to the original meaning of cutting off parts of plants.

dock (third-person singular simple present docks, present participle docking, simple past and past participle docked)

1. (cooking) To pierce with holes, as pricking pastry or dough with a fork to prevent excessive rising in the oven.^[1]
   • 11 July 2008, Emma Christensen, The Kitchn: How and When to Dock a Pie Crust

     Pricking holes in the rolled-out pie dough allows the steam to escape while it's baking. Without this, the steam would puff up in bubbles and pockets throughout the crust, which would make some parts of the crust cook too quickly and also result in an uneven surface for your filling. Docking is simple. Just roll out your pie dough and lift it into the pan. After pressing it in and shaping the edge, prick it all over with a fork.

• “dock”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

From Old Swedish doch, dogh, dog, thoch, thok, tog, from Middle Low German doch, from Old Saxon thōh‚ from Proto-West Germanic *þauh. Replaced native Old Swedish þo, from Old Norse þó.

• IPA^(key): /dɔkː/

• Audio:

  (file)

dock

1. though, however, still, nevertheless

   Om jag än måste dö med dig, så skall jag dock förvisso icke förneka dig.

   Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee (Matthew 26:35)

   Dock, natt skall icke förbliva där nu ångest råder.

   Nevertheless the dimness [shall] not [be] such as [was] in her vexation (Isaiah 9:1)

   Man river åt sig till höger och förbliver dock hungrig, man tager för sig till vänster och bliver dock ej mätt

   And he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied (Isaiah 9:20)