Derrick

How to spell derrick

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce derrick

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does derrick mean?

1. nounA hoisting machine or framework, especially the tall tower built over an oil or gas well, or a spar-and-tackle crane for lifting heavy loads.

Derrick in a sentence

• The steel derrick towered over the new oil field at dawn.

• Dock workers used the ship's derrick to swing the cargo onto the quay.

Where does derrick come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Derrick is one of the rare English words that began life as a person's name. Around the year 1600 a man named Thomas Derrick worked as the public hangman at Tyburn in London, and he was notorious enough that the gallows themselves came to be called a 'derrick'. His surname descended from the Dutch and Germanic personal name Diederik (related to Dietrich), built from elements meaning roughly 'ruler of the people'. By a grim but logical step, the framework used to hang a person was later seen as a kind of hoisting apparatus, and the word transferred to the spar-and-tackle cranes used to lift cargo and, eventually, to the tall towers raised over oil and gas wells. So the doubled r and the hard -ick ending both come straight from a real Elizabethan executioner, which is a useful peg for remembering the spelling.

How the word is built

• derrick (a single unanalysable unit taken whole from the surname Derrick; no prefix, root, or suffix in the usual sense)