Clock

How to spell clock

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce clock

What does clock mean?

1. nounA device that measures and shows the time, typically mounted on a wall or standing on a surface rather than worn.
2. verbTo record or measure an elapsed time or speed, especially using an instrument.

Clock in a sentence

• noun

  The kitchen clock was running ten minutes fast all week.

• verb

  The radar can clock a passing car in under a second.

• noun

  He glanced at the clock and realised the meeting had already started.

• verb

  The runners hoped to clock a faster time on the flatter course.

Where does clock come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Clock comes from the Middle Dutch word klocke, meaning 'bell', and the closely related Middle Low German form, which is how it reached English in the late 1300s. The deeper source is the Medieval Latin clocca, also meaning 'bell', a word many scholars believe was originally Celtic, spread across Europe by Irish missionary monks who rang bells to mark the hours of prayer. The earliest mechanical timekeepers struck a bell on the hour rather than showing a face with hands, so people named the whole device after its sound: a 'bell' became a 'clock'. As silent dials and pointers replaced the chiming mechanism, the word kept its meaning of a timepiece while losing its link to ringing. The same bell-root survives in the German Glocke and the French cloche, and it explains why the spelling keeps that hard ck ending rather than anything fancier.

How the word is built

• clock (from Middle Dutch klocke 'bell'); a single unanalysable root word with no productive prefix or suffix