Tuck

How to spell tuck

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tuck

What does tuck mean?

1. verbTo push, fold, or gather something snugly into a confined or hidden position.
2. nounA flattened fold or pleat stitched into a garment to shape or shorten it.

Tuck in a sentence

• verb

  She likes to tuck her shirt into her trousers before a meeting.

• noun

  The tailor added a small tuck at the waist to improve the fit.

• verb

  He would always tuck the children in before reading them a story.

• noun

  A neat tuck along the seam removed the extra length from the sleeve.

Where does tuck come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word descended from the Old English verb tucian, which originally meant 'to ill-treat, harass, or torment', a fairly violent sense. It is closely related to the German zucken, meaning 'to twitch or jerk', and to ziehen, 'to pull', so the underlying idea is one of a sharp pulling or drawing motion. Over the medieval period the harsh meaning faded and the word came to describe pulling cloth tight and gathering it up, especially the work of a fuller who 'tucked' or beat woven cloth. From gathering cloth it broadened into the familiar modern senses of folding fabric, pushing something snugly into place, and tucking a child into bed. The British schoolboy slang 'tuck' for food and sweets, which gave us the 'tuck shop', grew separately in the 1800s from the idea of tucking food away into one's mouth.

How the word is built

• tuck (from Old English tucian: to ill-treat, later to pull or gather up)