Word.ws English Dictionary

dock

UK/dɒk/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/dɔk/

dock noun: any of the genus Rumex of coarse weedy plants with small green flowers related to buckwheat, especially bitter dock (Rumex obtusifolius), and used as potherbs and in folk medicine, especially in curing nettle rash. Also the ellipsis of scene-dock.

dock: any of the genus Rumex of coarse weedy plants with small green flowers related to buckwheat,...
Image: Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

dock (countable and uncountable, plural docks)

  1. Any of the genus Rumex of coarse weedy plants with small green flowers related to buckwheat, especially bitter dock (Rumex obtusifolius), and used as potherbs and in folk medicine, especially in curing nettle rash.
    • And vnder neath him his courageous ſteed, / The fierce Spumador trode them downe like docks […]1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 352
  2. A burdock plant, or the leaves of that plant.

Noun (2)

dock (plural docks)

  1. The fleshy root of an animal's tail; specifically after clipping or cutting.
    • The Dock is about 1 inch thick, and two inches broad, like an Apothecaries Spatule. Of what length the whole, is uncertain, this being only part of it, though it looks as if cut off near the Buttock1681, Nehemiah Grew, Musæum Regalis Societatis. Or A Catalogue & Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities Belonging to the Royal Society and Preserved at Gresham Colledge. […], London: […]...
  2. (obsolete) The buttocks or anus.
    • And on a Cuſhion ſtuffed with Flocks, / She clapt her dainty pair of Docks.1665, Charles Cotton, Scarronnides
  3. A leather case used to cover the clipped or cut tail of a horse.

Verb (1)

dock (third-person singular simple present docks, present participle docking, simple past and past participle docked)

  1. (transitive) To clip or cut off a section of an animal's tail; to practise a caudectomy.
    • The Celebrity, by arts unknown, induced Mrs. Judge Short and two other ladies to call at Mohair on a certain afternoon when Mr. Cooke was trying a trotter on the track.[…]Their example was followed by others at a time when the master of Mohair was superintending in person the docking of some...1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, pages 58–59
  2. (transitive) To reduce (wages); to deduct from (someone).
    • Her wages were docked by ten dollars.
    • The team have been docked six points at Paris 2024 and Priestman received a one-year football ban from world governing body Fifa.2024 July 28, “Priestman 'heartbroken' by drone scandal as funding pulled”, in BBC
  3. (informal, transitive) To reduce the wages of (a person).
    • They docked me ten dollars for breaking the vase.
  4. (transitive) To cut off, bar, or destroy.
    • to dock an entail
  5. (transitive) To pierce holes, as pricking dough with a fork, to prevent excessive rising in the oven.
    • Pricking holes in the rolled-out pie dough allows the steam to escape while it's baking. Without this, the steam would puff up in bubbles and pockets throughout the crust, which would make some parts of the crust cook too quickly and also result in an uneven surface for your filling. Docking is...Emma Christensen (11 July 2008), “How and When to Dock a Pie Crust”, in The Kitchn

Noun (3)

dock (plural docks)

  1. (US) A fixed structure attached to shore to which a vessel is secured when in port; usually for loading and unloading.
    • With just the turn of a shoulder she indicated the water front, where, at the end of the dock on which they stood, lay the good ship, Mount Vernon, river packet, the black smoke already pouring from her stacks.1910, Emerson Hough, “A Lady in Company”, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    dockyard, pier, quay, wharf
  2. (UK) The body of water next to and around a pier.
    Synonyms:
    harbor, harbour, slip, berth
  3. The area of arrival and departure of a train in a railway station.
  4. A section of a hotel or restaurant.
    • coffee dock
  5. A device designed as a base for holding a connected portable appliance for providing the necessary electrical charge for its autonomy, or as a hardware extension for additional capabilities.
  6. A toolbar that provides the user with a way of launching applications by their icons, and switching between running applications.
  7. An act or instance of docking; joining two things together.

Verb (2)

dock (third-person singular simple present docks, present participle docking, simple past and past participle docked)

  1. (intransitive) To land at a harbour.
    • On 28 February, for example, a US Navy ship docked in Nampo, the port for Pyongyang, with equipment for joint searches for remains of US soldiers missing from the 1950-1953 Korean War. China may look askance at the US and North Korean militaries working together like this.29 February 2012, Aidan Foster-Carter, BBC News North Korea: The denuclearisation dance resumeshttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17213948
  2. To join two moving items.
    • to dock spacecraft
    • A “moving platform” scheme[…]is more technologically ambitious than maglev trains even though it relies on conventional rails. Local trains would use side-by-side rails to roll alongside intercity trains and allow passengers to switch trains by stepping through docking bays.2013 June 1, “Ideas coming down the track”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 13 (Technology Quarterly)
  3. To move a spaceship into its dock/berth under its own power.
  4. (intransitive, slang) In male homosexual sex, to engage in docking, the inserting of the tip of one participant's penis into the foreskin of the other participant.
  5. (transitive) To drag a user interface element (such as a toolbar) to a position on screen where it snaps into place.
  6. (transitive) To place (an electronic device) in its dock.
    • I docked the laptop and allowed it to recharge for an hour.

Noun (4)

dock (plural docks)

  1. Part of a courtroom where the accused sits.

Proper noun capitalized: Dock

Dock

  1. (US, dated, rare) A male given name or nickname.
  2. A surname.

Also used as

dock is also the ellipsis of scene-dock.

dock meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Bengali

dock in Hindi

fixed structure to which a vessel is secured
गोदी godī

dock in Marathi

डॉक, गोदी

dock in Urdu

گودی

dock in Bengali

ডকে
More languagesFewer languages
dock in Telugu
డోక్
dock in Malayalam
തുറ tuṟa
dock in Punjabi
ਡੋੱਕ
dock in Odia
ଡକ୍
dock in Malay
demaga
dock in Thai
ท่า tâa
dock in Vietnamese
chút chít
dock in Myanmar
ဆိပ် hcip

Examples of dock in a sentence

  • I was at the docks seeing that the goods got properly unloaded.
  • When the ship was brought into dry dock, it was found that she had underwater damage.
  • The docks, which once harbored tall ships, now harbor only petty thieves.

All 40 example sentences with dock

Synonyms of dock

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of dock

Forms of dock

Noun
pluraldocks
Verb
third-person singular presentdocks
present participledocking
past participledocked
pastdocked

Past tense of dock: docked

Plural of dock: docks

Origin of dock

From Middle English dokke, from Old English docce, from Proto-West Germanic *dokkā, from Proto-Germanic *dukkǭ (compare Old Danish dokke (“water-dock”), West Flemish dokke, dokkebladeren (“coltsfoot, butterbur”)), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰew- (“dark”) (compare Latvian duga (“scum, slime on water”)).

A dog with a partially docked (etymology 2, verb sense 1) tail From Middle English dok (“trimmed hair, dock”), from Old English *docce, *docca (as in fingerdocce (“finger muscles”)), from Proto-West Germanic *dokkā, from Proto-Germanic *dukkǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeu-k- (“to spin, shake”). Compare Icelandic dokkur (“stumpy tail”), Low German Dokke (“bundle of straw”), West Frisian dok (“bunch, ball (twine)”), Albanian dak (“big ram”), Lithuanian dvė̃kti (“to breathe, wheeze”), dvãkas (“breath”), Sanskrit धुक्षति (dhukṣati, “to blow”). The verb is from Middle English dokken (“to cut short, dock, curtail”), derived from the noun.

A laptop docking (etymology 3, noun sense 5) station A GUI dock (etymology 3, noun sense 6) on Linux From Early Modern English meaning "area of mud in which a ship can rest at low tide, dock", borrowed from either Dutch dok (“dock, wharf”) or Middle Low German docke (“dock, wharf”), both from Middle Dutch docke (“port, harbour”), of uncertain origin. The original sense may have been "the furrow a grounded vessel makes in a mud bank". Compare Danish dok, Dutch dok, West Frisian dok, German Dock, Low German Dock, Swedish docka. Some sources link this word to an unattested Middle Dutch *docke (“watercourse, trench, canal”), which is a ghost word, only being inferred from Mediaeval Latin documents in the form of ducta, doctus, doccia (“conduit, canal”). However, if this theory is correct, then it would relate the word to Italian doccia (“drainpipe”), making dock a doublet of douche and duct. An alternative theory ties Middle Dutch docke to a North Germanic or Scandinavian source, notably Old Norse dǫkk, dökð (“depression in the landscape, pit, pool, trench”); compare Icelandic dökk, Norwegian dokk (“hollow, low ground”), Swedish dank (“marshy ground”). If so, this would make dock a...

Words formed from dock

Phrases with dock

Words that rhyme with dock

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dock

What does dock mean?
Dock means any of the genus Rumex of coarse weedy plants with small green flowers related to buckwheat, especially bitter dock (Rumex obtusifolius), and used as potherbs and in folk medicine, especially in curing nettle rash.
What is dock in Hindi?
Dock in Hindi is गोदी (godī). See Dock meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is dock?
Dock can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce dock?
Dock is pronounced /dɒk/ (UK).
What is the plural of dock?
The plural of dock is docks.

Words near dock in the dictionary

  1. Docimo
  2. docimology
  3. docious
  4. docity
  5. Dociu
  6. dock
  7. dock connector
  8. dock connectors
  9. dock door
  10. dock doors
  11. dock leaf

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dock (page history and authors); Dock (page history and authors); dock (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dock (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dock (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dock (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dock (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); dock (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-dock.ogg.

Cite this entry: “dock.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dock. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.