Word.ws English Dictionary

oche

/ˈɒki/US/ˈɑki/

oche noun: a line behind which a player's front foot must be placed when throwing a dart.

Noun

oche (plural oches)

  1. A line behind which a player's front foot must be placed when throwing a dart.
    • As has been mentioned, Darts of to-day is essentially a "public-house game," and in pretty nearly every inn, club, or institute where it has a footing (and in which has it not!) will be found minor variations in play and often games that are peculiar to the locality or even to the "school" itself....1950, Edmond Hoyle, Lawrence H. Dawson, “Darts”, in Hoyle’s Games Modernized, 20th edition, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, →OCLC; republished as The Complete Hoyle’s Games (Wordsworth Reference)...
    • Henry Lewis's body was tense, taut, his toes against the hockey, his right arm raised, his left eye half-closed. With grim intensity, backed by years of practice and experience, he sighted along the steel point, drew his arm back—and let the dart fly.1977, Harry Harrison, chapter 22, in Skyfall, [London]: Hamlyn Publishing Group, →OCLC

Proper noun capitalized: Oche

Oche

  1. Former name of Euboea.

Examples of oche in a sentence

  • Reaching the target within 15 darts (i.e. five visits to the oche, to slip into the vernacular) is not unusual; […]2003, John Haigh, “Let’s Play Best of Three”, in Taking Chances: Winning with Probability, new edition, Oxford; New York, N.Y.: Oxford...
  • The pièce de résistance was the bar where I had over a dozen dart boards with pop-up oches.2008, Eric Bristow, [Paul Carter], “The Milky Bar Kid”, in The Crafty Cockney: Eric Bristow: The Autobiography, London: Century, →ISBN...
  • Whether a player is a bullshitter, adept at hitting bullseyes, or a chucker, who throws the darts willy-nilly and hopes for the best, the pull of the oche is the same.2016, Susie Dent, “Keeping ’Em on the Island: Darters”, in Dent’s Modern Tribes: The Secret Languages of Britain, London: John Murray...
  • And it's because something of the mundanely manual still adheres to darts that the players' heroic walk of honour from the green room to the oche is so incongruous.2017, Howard Jacobson, “The Wages of Indulgence is Darts”, in The Dog’s Last Walk (and Other Pieces), London; New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury...

Forms of oche

pluraloches
alternative formhockey

Origin of oche

Possibly from Middle French oche (“notch”), from Old French ocher, ochier (“to make a notch in; to notch”), which, according to Partridge, could be related to French hocher and English nick (“small cut, notch”).

Words that rhyme with oche

6 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about oche

What does oche mean?
Oche means a line behind which a player's front foot must be placed when throwing a dart.
How do you use oche in a sentence?
Reaching the target within 15 darts (i.e. five visits to the oche, to slip into the vernacular) is not unusual; […]
What part of speech is oche?
Oche can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce oche?
Oche is pronounced /ˈɒki/ (UK).
What is the plural of oche?
The plural of oche is oches.

Words near oche in the dictionary

  1. ochavo
  2. ochavos
  3. ochazuke
  4. ochdamh
  5. ochdamhs
  6. oche
  7. Ochelata
  8. Ocheltree
  9. Ocheltrees
  10. ochem
  11. Ocheng

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oche (page history and authors); Oche (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-oche.wav.

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