puck

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: pŭk, IPA^(key): /pʌk/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌk

Etymology 1

From Middle English pouke, from Old English pūca (“goblin, demon”), from Proto-West Germanic *pūkō, from Proto-Germanic *pūkô (“a goblin, spook”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pāug(')- (“brilliance, spectre”).

Cognate with Old Norse púki (“devil”) (dialectal Swedish puke), Middle Low German spōk, spūk (“apparition, ghost”), German Spuk (“a haunting”). Doublet of pooka. More at spook.

Noun

puck (plural pucks)

1. (now rare) A mischievous or hostile spirit.
   • 2017, Ronald Hutton, The Witch, Yale University Press, published 2018, page 232:

     William Tyndale allotted this character a role, of leading nocturnal travellers astray as the puck had been said to do since Anglo-Saxon times and the goblin since the later medieval period.

Synonyms

• See goblin (hostile) and fairy (mischievous)

Derived terms

• puckish

Etymology 2

From or influenced by Irish poc (“stroke in hurling, bag”). Compare poke (1861).

Verb

puck (third-person singular simple present pucks, present participle pucking, simple past and past participle pucked)

1. (chiefly Ireland) To hit, strike.

Noun

puck (plural pucks)

1. (ice hockey) A hard rubber disc; any other flat disc meant to be hit across a flat surface in a game.
   • 1886 February 28, Boston Daily Globe, page 2:

     In hockey a flat piece of rubber, say four inches long by three wide and about an inch thick, called a ‘puck’, is used.

   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 184:

     The game itself, though played by men, was probably meant to enact a mediation of the opposites of male and female, with a circular puck being the feminine symbol and the phallic hockey stick being the masculine symbol.

2. (chiefly Canada) An object shaped like a puck.
   • 2004, Art Directors Annual, volume 83, Rotovision, page 142:

     He reaches into the urinal and picks up the puck. He then walk over to the sink and replaces a bar of soap with the urinal puck.

3. (computing) A pointing device with a crosshair.
4. (hurling, camogie) A penalty shot.

Derived terms

Descendants

• → Danish: puck
• → German: Puck
• → Swedish: puck

Translations

See also

• Hockey puck on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Etymology 3

From the Irish poc (“male adult goat, billy goat”). Doublet of buck.

Noun

puck (plural pucks)

1. (Ireland, rustic) billy goat

Etymology 4

Blend of pike +‎ tuck

Noun

puck (plural pucks)

1. (trampoline, gymnastics) A body position between the pike and tuck positions, with knees slightly bent and folded in; open tuck.
   • 2013, The Sports Book: The Sports, the Rules, the Tactics, the Techniques‎:

     The puck position is allowed during competitions when performing multi-twisting multiple somersaults.

Swedish

Etymology

From English puck.

Noun

puck c

1. puck

Declension

Idioms

All are colloquial.

• lugna puckar (“calm, under control”, literally “calm pucks”)
• raka puckar (“direct, blunt (compare English straight shooter)”, literally “straight pucks”)
• snabba puckar (“fast-paced”, literally “quick pucks”)

Further reading

• puck in Svensk ordbok.