Word.ws English Dictionary

hox

hox is the abbreviation of homeobox.

Meaning of homeobox

Noun

homeobox (plural homeoboxes)

  1. A short sequence of DNA that is shared by several genes involved in the morphogenesis of many organisms.
    • When he looked in mice, there it was again: almost exactly the same 180-letter string – the homeobox.1999, Matt Ridley, Genome, Harper Perennial, published 2004, page 176

Verb

hox (third-person singular simple present hoxes, present participle hoxing, simple past and past participle hoxed)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To hock; to hamstring; to cripple; to disable.
    • To bide upon't: thou art not honest; or / If thou inclin'st that way, thou art a coward, / Which hoxes honesty behind, restraining / From course required.c. 1610–1611, William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale, act 1, scene 2
    Synonyms:
    hamstring, hock, hough

Noun capitalized: HOX

HOX (uncountable)

  1. hypohalous acid

Synonyms of hox

Forms of hox

Noun
pluralhoxes
Verb
third-person singular presenthoxes
present participlehoxing
past participlehoxed
pasthoxed

Origin of hox

Inherited from Middle English hoxen, reduction or back-formation of earlier hoxenen, from the noun *hoxene (only attested as hokschyne, with alteration after schyne), from Old English hōhsinu, from Proto-West Germanic *hą̄hasinu, from Proto-Germanic *hanhasinwō, from *hanhaz (“heel”) + *senawō (“sinew”). Compare hough, huxen, and sinew.

Words formed from hox

Phrases with hox

Questions about hox

What does hox mean?
Hox means to hock; to hamstring; to cripple; to disable.
What is hox the abbreviation of?
Hox is the abbreviation of homeobox.
What part of speech is hox?
Hox can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of hox?
The past tense of hox is hoxed.

Words near hox in the dictionary

  1. howzat
  2. howzats
  3. Howze
  4. Howzes
  5. howzit
  6. hox
  7. hox gene
  8. hox genes
  9. hoxed
  10. hoxes
  11. Hoxha

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hox (page history and authors); HOX (page history and authors); homeobox (page history and authors). 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.

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