Dock

How to spell dock

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dock

What does dock mean?

1. nounAn enclosed area of water in a port where ships are loaded, unloaded, or repaired.
2. verbTo deduct part of someone's wages, or to cut something short such as a tail.
3. nounThe enclosed space in a criminal court where the accused person stands or sits during a trial.
4. nounA common broad-leaved weed whose leaves are traditionally used to soothe nettle stings.

Dock in a sentence

• noun

  The cargo ship waited at the dock for the crane crews to arrive.

• verb

  The manager threatened to dock an hour's pay for the late arrival.

• noun

  The defendant stood silently in the dock as the verdict was read.

• noun

  She rubbed a dock leaf on the sting to ease the burning.

• noun

  Workers unloaded the crates onto the dock before dawn.

• verb

  The breeder chose not to dock the puppies' tails.

Where does dock come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The word dock has gathered several distinct meanings from different roots, which is why it feels like several words wearing one spelling. The harbour sense entered English in the late 1400s from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German 'docke', which described the hollow or channel of water in which a ship rested at low tide; sailors and shipwrights of the North Sea trade carried the term across. The verb meaning 'to cut short', as in docking a tail or docking pay, comes from a separate older root referring to the solid fleshy part of an animal's tail, and from there to the act of trimming it. The plant called dock, a broad-leaved weed traditionally rubbed on nettle stings, descends from Old English 'docce', a native plant name unrelated to ships. The courtroom dock, the enclosure where an accused person stands, arrived later and is thought to derive from a Flemish word 'dok' meaning a cage or pen. The short, blunt spelling has stayed remarkably stable, since there are no silent letters or vowel traps to lose.

How the word is built

• dock (single root; from Middle Dutch/Old English origins depending on sense)