Word.ws English Dictionary

rackan

rackan noun: a chain or bar drilled with holes to accommodate pot-hooks from which cooking vessels can be suspended over a fire; a pot-hook.

Noun

rackan (plural rackans)

  1. (Northern England, UK, dialectal) A chain or bar drilled with holes to accommodate pot-hooks from which cooking vessels can be suspended over a fire; a pot-hook.

Forms of rackan

pluralrackans
alternative formracon
alternative formrackin
alternative formracken
alternative formreckan
alternative formrecon
alternative formreckin
alternative formreckon

Origin of rackan

From Middle English rakente, from Old English racente (“chain, fetter”) and Old Norse rekendi (“chain”); both from Proto-Germanic *rakintǭ (“fetter”), from Proto-Indo-European *reǵ- (“to bind”). Cognate with Old High German rahhenza (“chain”). See also rackle.

Words formed from rackan

  • reckan-crook
  • reckin-hook

Questions about rackan

What does rackan mean?
Rackan means a chain or bar drilled with holes to accommodate pot-hooks from which cooking vessels can be suspended over a fire; a pot-hook.
What part of speech is rackan?
Rackan is a noun.
What is the plural of rackan?
The plural of rackan is rackans.

Words near rackan in the dictionary

  1. rack-renters
  2. rack-rents
  3. Racka
  4. rackable
  5. rackabones
  6. rackan
  7. rackans
  8. rackarock
  9. rackboard
  10. rackboards
  11. racke

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rackan (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: “rackan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rackan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.