tuck

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /tʌk/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌk

Etymology 1

From Middle English tuken, touken (“to torment, to stretch (cloth)”), from Old English tūcian (“to torment, vex”) and Middle Dutch tucken (“to tuck”), both from Proto-Germanic *teuh-, *teug- (“to draw, pull”) (compare also *tukkōną), from Proto-Indo-European *dewk- (“to pull”). Akin to Old High German zucchen (“to snatch, tug”), zuchôn (“to jerk”), German Low German tuken (“to tug, pluck, grab and pull towards”), Old English tēon (“to draw, pull, train”). Doublet of touch.

Verb

tuck (third-person singular simple present tucks, present participle tucking, simple past and past participle tucked)

1. (transitive) To pull or gather up (an item of fabric).
2. (transitive) To push into a snug position; to place somewhere safe, or handy, or somewhat hidden.

   Tuck in your shirt.  I tucked in the sheet.  He tucked the $10 bill into his shirt pocket.

   • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, “His Own People”, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC, page 6:

     It was flood-tide along Fifth Avenue; motor, brougham, and victoria swept by on the glittering current; pretty women glanced out from limousine and tonneau; young men of his own type, silk-hatted, frock-coated, the crooks of their walking sticks tucked up under their left arms, passed on the Park side.

3. (intransitive, often with "in" or "into") To eat; to consume.
4. (ergative) To fit neatly.

   The sofa tucks nicely into that corner.  Kenwood House is tucked into a corner of Hampstead Heath.

5. To curl into a ball; to fold up and hold one's legs.

   The diver tucked, flipped, and opened up at the last moment.

6. To sew folds; to make a tuck or tucks in.

   to tuck a dress

7. To full, as cloth.
8. (LGBT, of a drag queen, trans woman, etc.) To conceal one’s penis and testicles, as with a gaff or by fastening them down with adhesive tape.

   Honey, have you tucked today? We don’t wanna see anything nasty down there.

9. (when playing scales on piano keys) To keep the thumb in position while moving the rest of the hand over it to continue playing keys that are outside the thumb.
10. (aviation) Ellipsis of Mach tuck.

    Never take a first-generation Learjet past Mach 0.82; it'll tuck hard nose-down and you won't be able to pull out from the dive.

Antonyms

• untuck

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

tuck (plural tucks)

1. An act of tucking; a pleat or fold.
2. (sewing) A fold in fabric that has been stitched in place from end to end, as to reduce the overall dimension of the fabric piece.
3. A curled position.
4. (medicine, surgery) A plastic surgery technique to remove excess skin.

   tummy tuck

5. (music, piano, when playing scales on piano keys) The act of keeping the thumb in position while moving the rest of the hand over it to continue playing keys that are outside the thumb.
6. (diving) A curled position, with the shins held towards the body.
7. (nautical) The afterpart of a ship, immediately under the stern or counter, where the ends of the bottom planks are collected and terminate by the tuck-rail.
8. (British, dated, school slang, India) Food, especially snack food.

Derived terms

Translations

Related terms

• tucker

Etymology 2

From Old French estoc (“rapier”), from Italian stocco (“a truncheon, a short sword”). Doublet of estoc.

Noun

tuck (plural tucks)

1. (archaic) A rapier, a sword.
   • 1662, [Samuel Butler], “”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. , London: John Martyn and Henry Herringman, , published 1678, →OCLC; republished in A[lfred] R[ayney] Waller, editor, Hudibras: Written in the Time of the Late Wars, Cambridge: University Press, 1905, →OCLC, canto 2:

     […] with force he labour'd / To free's blade from retentive scabbard; / And after many a painful pluck, / From rusty durance he bail'd tuck […]

   • c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     [...] dismount thy tuck, be yare in thy preparation, for thy assailant is quick, skilful, and deadly. [...]

   • 1826, [Walter Scott], Woodstock; Or, The Cavalier. , volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, →OCLC:

     He wore large hose, […] and a tuck, as it was then called, or rapier, of tremendous length.

Translations

Etymology 3

Compare tocsin.

Noun

tuck (plural tucks)

1. The beat of a drum.

Manx

Verb

tuck (verbal noun tuckal, past participle tuckit)

1. to full (cloth)

Synonyms

• walk
• giallee