clock

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A device that shows the time, usually on a wall or table.

   The clock on the wall said it was almost midnight.

2. 2
   verb

   To measure the time or speed of someone or something.

   The police clocked the car at 90 miles per hour.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Clock comes from medieval Latin clocca, “bell.” In English it first meant a bell, then the striking mechanism of a timepiece, and eventually the timekeeping instrument itself. The Australian slang verb meaning “hit in the face,” recorded from the 1920s, arose from clock as slang for a face, while the 1930s sense “notice” or “watch” refers to checking a clock.

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…

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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary