Word.ws English Dictionary

mattock

/ˈmætək/

mattock noun: an agricultural tool whose blades are at right angles to the body, similar to a pickaxe.

mattock: an agricultural tool whose blades are at right angles to the body, similar to a pickaxe
Image: Stemonitis, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

mattock (plural mattocks)

  1. An agricultural tool whose blades are at right angles to the body, similar to a pickaxe.
    • Workmen, breaking up an old floor, have come to him, mattocks in their hands, dismayed: ‘Mr Richard, see what we have turned up ...’2020, Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light, Fourth Estate, page 695

Verb

mattock (third-person singular simple present mattocks, present participle mattocking, simple past and past participle mattocked)

  1. To cut or dig with a mattock.

Proper noun capitalized: Mattock

Mattock

  1. A surname.

mattock meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada

mattock in Tamil

மண்கொத்தி, மண்வெட்டி, உளிப்பிக்கான்

mattock in Urdu

mattock, pickaxe
کدال kudāl

mattock in Malayalam

agricultural tool
കൂന്താലി kūntāli

mattock in Kannada

ಗುದ್ದಲಿ
More languagesFewer languages
mattock in Arabic
مِعْوَل miʕwal
mattock in Persian
میتین mitin
mattock in Myanmar
ပေါက်တူး pauktu:

Forms of mattock

Noun
pluralmattocks
Verb
third-person singular presentmattocks
present participlemattocking
past participlemattocked
pastmattocked

Origin of mattock

From Middle English mattok (“mattock, pickaxe”), from Old English mattuc, meottoc, mettoc (“mattock, fork, trident”), from Proto-West Germanic *mattjuk (“mattock, ploughshare”), from Proto-Indo-European *met- (“to cut, reap”). Related to Old High German medela (“plough”), Middle High German metze, metz (“knife”), Latin mateola (“implement for digging in the soil”), Polish motyka (“hoe, mattock”), Russian моты́га (motýga, “hoe, mattock”), Lithuanian matikkas (“mattock”), Sanskrit मत्य (matyà, “harrow, roller, club”). More at mason.

Questions about mattock

What does mattock mean?
Mattock means an agricultural tool whose blades are at right angles to the body, similar to a pickaxe.
What is mattock in Tamil?
Mattock in Tamil is மண்கொத்தி, மண்வெட்டி, உளிப்பிக்கான். See Mattock meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is mattock?
Mattock can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce mattock?
Mattock is pronounced /ˈmætək/.
What is the plural of mattock?
The plural of mattock is mattocks.

Words near mattock in the dictionary

  1. Mattis
  2. Mattises
  3. Mattison
  4. Mattmiller
  5. mattness
  6. mattock
  7. mattocked
  8. mattocking
  9. mattocks
  10. Mattockses
  11. mattoid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mattock (page history and authors); Mattock (page history and authors); mattock (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); کدال (Urdu) (page history and authors); mattock (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-mattock.wav.

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