Paddock

How to spell paddock

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce paddock

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does paddock mean?

1. nounA small fenced field, especially one where horses or livestock are kept.
2. nounThe enclosed area at a racing circuit where teams keep and prepare their vehicles.

Paddock in a sentence

• The mare grazed quietly in the paddock behind the stables.

• The mechanics wheeled the car back into the paddock after qualifying.

• They mended the fence around the lower paddock before winter.

• Reporters gathered in the paddock to interview the drivers.

Where does paddock come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word descends from the Old English 'pearroc', meaning a small enclosed piece of land or an enclosure for animals. By the sixteenth century this had developed into a dialectal form 'parrock', and the consonants gradually shifted to give the familiar 'paddock' we use today. The same Germanic root that produced 'pearroc' also lies behind the word 'park', so a paddock is essentially a small, fenced cousin of the parkland; both share the idea of ground deliberately bounded off. The unexpected double letters are the trap: the spelling settled with a doubled 'd' and a final 'ck', neither of which the sound strictly demands. In Australian and New Zealand English the meaning broadened so that 'paddock' can mean almost any fenced field, while in motorsport it came to name the enclosed area where teams keep their vehicles.

How the word is built

• paddock (a single root word; an altered form of dialectal 'parrock', from Old English 'pearroc' meaning enclosure)