clock

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to measure the time or duration of an event or action or the person who performs an action in a certain period of time

   I clocked the runners.

2. 2
   noun

   A chronometer, an instrument that measures time, particularly the time of day.

   When the clock says midnight.

3. 3
   noun

   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.

4. 4
   noun

   The odometer of a motor vehicle.

   This car has over 300,000 miles on the clock.

5. 5
   noun

   A time clock.

   I can't go off to lunch yet: I'm still on the clock.

6. 6
   noun

   A CPU clock cycle, or T-state.

   Executing a NEXT to code takes 7 clocks, or 1.05 microseconds.

7. 7
   noun

   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.

8. 8
   verb

   To measure the speed of.

   He was clocked at 155 miles per hour.

Etymology

First use appears c. 1370. From Middle English clokke, clok, cloke (“clock”), from Middle Dutch clocke (“bell, clock”), from Old Dutch *klokka, from Medieval Latin clocca (“bell, clock, cloak”), probably of Celtic origin, from Proto-Celtic *klokkos (“bell”) (compare Welsh cloch (“bell”), Old Irish cloc (“bell, clock”)), either onomatopoeic or from Proto-Indo-European *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…