Clockwork

How to spell clockwork

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce clockwork

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does clockwork mean?

1. nounA mechanism of toothed wheels and springs, like that driving a traditional clock or a wind-up toy.
2. adjectiveOperated by a wind-up mechanism, or marked by mechanical, predictable regularity.

Clockwork in a sentence

• noun

  The antique music box is driven by delicate clockwork hidden in its base.

• adjective

  The children played with a clockwork robot that marched whenever it was wound.

• noun

  He wound the tiny clockwork and the model train trundled across the floor.

• adjective

  The morning commute follows a clockwork routine that never varies by more than a minute.

Where does clockwork come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound that joins 'clock' and 'work', recorded from the late 1500s to describe the inner mechanism of a clock. The first element, 'clock', came into English from Middle Dutch and Middle Low German 'klocke', which meant a bell, ultimately tracing back to the Medieval Latin 'clocca', also 'bell'; early public clocks announced the hour by striking a bell, so the bell name slid across to the whole machine. The second element, 'work', is a native Old English word, 'weorc', meaning an action, a labour, or a built mechanism, and it is the same 'work' found in 'metalwork' and 'network'. Put together, 'clockwork' originally named the toothed gears and springs that drive a clock, and because those parts run with such steady regularity, the word grew a figurative sense of smooth, predictable precision, as in the phrase 'like clockwork'. The spelling is reassuringly regular: it is simply the two short words written solid, with no silent letters or doubled consonants to trip over.

How the word is built

• clock (timekeeping device, from Medieval Latin clocca 'bell')
• work (mechanism, from Old English weorc 'action, structure')