clock
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The clock attached to Big Ben in Elizabeth Tower, London, England. 
The clock of a dandelion.
See also: Clock
English
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /klɒk/
- (General American) enPR: kläk, IPA(key): /klɔk/, /klɑk/
- (Liverpool) IPA(key):
Audio (UK): (file) Audio (US): (file) - Rhymes: -ɒk
Etymology 1
c. 1350–1400, Middle English clokke, clok, cloke, from Middle Dutch clocke (“bell, clock”), from Old Dutch *klokka, 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, Dutch klok, Saterland Frisian Klokke (“bell; clock”), Low German Klock (“bell, clock”), German Glocke, Swedish klocka Doublet of cloak and cloche.
Alternative forms
- CLK (contraction used in electronics)
Noun
clock (countable and uncountable, plural clocks)
- A chronometer, an instrument that measures time, particularly the time of day.
- 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, , →OCLC, Canto II:
- The seasons bring the flower again,
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.
- 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.
- (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.
- (British) The odometer of a motor vehicle.
- This car has over 300,000 miles on the clock.
- (electronics) 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.
- We let the guys use the shop's tools and equipment for their own projects as long as they're off the clock.
- (computing, informal) 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.
- 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.
- (uncountable) A luck-based patience or solitaire card game with the cards laid out to represent the face of a clock.
- Synonym: clock patience
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
- 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
- atomic clock
- attoclock
- balloon clock
- banjo clock
- beat the 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 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
- clockwise
- clockwork
- continuous clock
- cuckoo clock
- dandelion clock
- death clock
- digital clock
- Doomsday Clock
- drumhead clock
- eight-day clock
- epigenetic clock
- equation 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
- flower clock
- game clock
- get one's clock cleaned
- grandfather clock
- grandfather's clock
- grandmother clock
- hydrogen maser atomic clock
- Jack o' the clock
- Japanese clock
- light 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
- of the clock
- on the clock
- over-clock
- pendulum 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
- synchronized clock
- talking clock
- tall-case clock
- ticking clock
- time clock
- time delay and integration clock
- turn back the clock
- turn the clock back
- vase clock
- wall clock
- wall-clock time
- watchclock
- watchman's clock
- water clock
- waterclock
- wind back the clock
- world clock
Translations
instrument to measure or keep track of time
|
odometer
|
electrical signal
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
Verb
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clocking, simple past and past participle clocked)
- (transitive) To measure the duration of.
- Synonym: time
- (transitive) To measure the speed of.
- He was clocked at 155 miles per hour.
- 1996, Jon Byrell, Lairs, Urgers and Coat-Tuggers, Sydney: Ironbark, page 186:
- Dan Patch clocked a scorching 1:55.5 flat.
- (transitive, slang) To hit (someone) heavily.
- (transitive, informal) To notice; to take notice of (someone or something).
- 2006, Lily Allen (lyrics and music), “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,
- 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.
- 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, […]
- 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).
- (transitive, informal, with as) To recognize; to assess.
- I'd already clocked her as someone who couldn't reliably be believed when she spoke. And now this too!
- 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.
- (transitive, informal) To identify (someone) as having some attribute (for example, being trans or gay).
- Synonym: read
- Once my transformation was complete I considered moving to London, where I felt there was less chance of being clocked and a larger support network.
- 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 […]
- 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."
- 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.
- 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.
- (British, slang) To falsify the reading of the odometer of a vehicle.
- (transitive, British, New Zealand, Australia, slang) To beat a video game.
- Have you clocked that game yet?
Derived terms
Translations
measure the duration of
|
measure the speed of
|
slang: take notice of
|
slang: falsify the reading of the odometer of a vehicle
Etymology 2
Uncertain; designs may have originally been bell-shaped and thus related to Etymology 1, above.
Noun
clock (plural clocks)
- A pattern near the heel of a sock or stocking.
- 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' hollyhocks
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.
- 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.
- c. 1720, Jonathan Swift, An Essay on Modern Education:
- his stockings with silver clocks were ravished from him
Translations
pattern near heel of a sock or stocking
Verb
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clocking, simple past and past participle clocked)
- (transitive) To ornament (e.g. the side of a stocking) with figured work.
See also
Etymology 3
Noun
clock (plural clocks)
- A large beetle, especially the European dung beetle (Geotrupes stercorarius).
Etymology 4
From Middle English clokken, from Old English cloccian, ultimately imitative; compare Dutch klokken, English cluck.
Verb
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clocking, simple past and past participle clocked)
- (Scotland, intransitive, dated) To make the sound of a hen; to cluck.
- (Scotland, intransitive, dated) To hatch.
Derived terms
Further reading
Scots
Verb
clock (third-person singular simple present clocks, present participle clockin, simple past clockit, past participle clockit)
- to hatch (an egg)