Word.ws English Dictionary

ruck

/ɹʌk/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Ireland/ɹʊk/

ruck noun: a throng or crowd of people or things; a mass, a pack. Also the obsolete form of roc.

Noun (1)

ruck (plural rucks)

  1. A throng or crowd of people or things; a mass, a pack.
    • Dandolo was constantly in the ditch, sometimes lying with his side against the bank, and had now been so hustled and driven that, had he been on the other side, he would have had no breath left to carry his rider, even in the ruck of the hunt.1873, Anthony Trollope, Phineas Redux, archived from the original on 11 Aug 2014, Chapter 16
  2. A contest in games in which the ball is thrown or bounced in the air and two players from opposing teams attempt to give their team an advantage, typically by tapping the ball to a teammate.
  3. A player who competes in said contests; a ruckman or ruckwoman.
  4. (archaic) Either of a ruckman or a ruck rover, but not a rover.
  5. Any one of a ruckman, a ruck rover or a rover; a follower.
  6. (rugby union) The situation formed when a player carrying the ball is brought to the ground and one or more members of each side are engaged above the ball, trying to win possession of it; a loose scrum.
  7. The common mass of people or things; the ordinary ranks.
    • ‘Here and there among cats one comes across an outstanding superior intellect, just as one does among the ruck of human beings [...].’1911, Saki, “Tobermory”, in The Chronicles of Clovis
  8. (colloquial) An argument or fight.
    • Your worth as a couple is not down to how passionate your rucks are—I said rucks—and how frantic the making-up sex is.2023 January 28, Justin Myers, “62 dating green flags that shout ‘this one’s a keeper’”, in The Guardian

Verb (1)

ruck (third-person singular simple present rucks, present participle rucking, simple past and past participle rucked)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To act as a ruck in a stoppage in Australian rules football.
  2. (transitive, rugby union) To contest the possession of the ball in a ruck.

Verb (2)

ruck (third-person singular simple present rucks, present participle rucking, simple past and past participle rucked)

  1. (transitive) To crease or fold.
    • Puzzle begged very hard to have the lion-skin taken off him. He said it was too hot and the way it was rucked up on his back was uncomfortable […]1956, C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle, Collins, 1998, Chapter 8
    • "What, exactly, happened down cellar?" Appleyard asked, straightening with his heel a rucked rug.1959, Peter De Vries, The Tents of Wickedness, page 28
  2. (intransitive) To become creased or folded.
    • "Will you come over now and try on your dress?" Ally asked, looking at her with wistful admiration. "I want to be sure the sleeves don't ruck up the same as they did yesterday."1917, Edith Wharton, chapter XII, in Summer […], New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 178

Noun (2)

ruck (plural rucks)

  1. A crease, a wrinkle, a pucker, as on fabric.

Verb (3)

ruck (third-person singular simple present rucks, present participle rucking, simple past and past participle rucked)

  1. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) To cower or huddle together; to squat; to sit, as a hen on eggs.
    • Bot now thei rucken in here nest
      And resten as hem liketh best.c. 1386–1390, John Gower, edited by Reinhold Pauli, Confessio Amantis of John Gower: Edited and Collated with the Best Manuscripts, volume (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Bell and...
    • The Rauen rook'd her on the Chimnies top,
      And chatt'ring Pies in dismall Discords sung.c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...

Noun (3)

ruck (plural rucks)

  1. (especially, slang) A rucksack; a large backpack.
    • Shah-e-Kot Valley, Afghanistan. March 2002. I strained to see over the soldiers in front of me. They were struggling to shuffle off the bird as quickly as they could. I dragged my ruck across the floor of the aircraft in my right hand.2007, Brandon Friedman, The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory, →ISBN, page 57
    • First of all – a “ruck” is nothing more than a backpack. So to "ruck march" is to carry a heavy duty backpack on a hike (loaded with gear and supplies).2013 July 5, Brad McLeod, Top 10 Ruck Marching Tips, accessed 17 JUL 2015

Verb (4)

ruck (third-person singular simple present rucks, present participle rucking, simple past and past participle rucked)

  1. To carry a backpack while hiking or marching.
    • He started at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday as he began rucking to church. He changed his clothes, went to church and then began rucking again. That distance totaled about nine miles. Rucking is hiking with a military style backpack, filled with weight.2015 June 16, Brandon Cole, “Mount Vernon's Barnes to Compete in "Death Race"”, in the Posey County News, page 13

Noun (4)

ruck (plural rucks)

  1. A small heifer.

Proper noun capitalized: Ruck

Ruck (plural Rucks)

  1. A surname from German.

Also used as

ruck is also the obsolete form of roc.

Examples of ruck in a sentence

  • She wore long dangling earrings faced with mirrors, and white Bermuda shorts rucked back to reveal knees and thighs like waxed maple.1989, Carol Shields, “Block Out”, in The Collected Stories, Random House Canada, 2004, page 299:
  • Rocky was only five foot six and skinny as a February coyote, but he could hump an eighty pound ruck across twenty mountain miles […]2015, Sean T. Smith, Wrath and Redemption, →ISBN:

All 13 example sentences with ruck

Forms of ruck

Noun
pluralrucks
Verb
third-person singular presentrucks
present participlerucking
past participlerucked
pastrucked

Plural of ruck: rucks

Origin of ruck

From Middle English ruke, from or related to Old Norse hraukr, which is from Proto-Germanic *hraukaz (“haystack, heap”). Compare Icelandic hrúka, Swedish ruka.

1780, from Old Norse hrukka (“wrinkle, crease”), from Proto-Germanic *hrunkijō, *hrunkitō (“fold, wrinkle”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to turn, bend”). Akin to Icelandic hrukka (“wrinkle, crease, ruck”), Old High German runza (“fold, wrinkle, crease”), German Runzel (“wrinkle”), Middle Dutch ronse (“frown”). More at frounce. Possibly related to Irish roc.

Compare Danish ruge (“to brood, to hatch”), itself related to Proto-Germanic *hraukaz (“heap, stack”).

Words formed from ruck

Phrases with ruck

Words that rhyme with ruck

39 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ruck

What does ruck mean?
Ruck means a throng or crowd of people or things; a mass, a pack.
How do you use ruck in a sentence?
She wore long dangling earrings faced with mirrors, and white Bermuda shorts rucked back to reveal knees and thighs like waxed maple.
What part of speech is ruck?
Ruck can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ruck?
Ruck is pronounced /ɹʌk/.
What is the plural of ruck?
The plural of ruck is rucks.

Words near ruck in the dictionary

  1. ruchniki
  2. ruchniks
  3. rucinol
  4. Rucinski
  5. Rucinskis
  6. ruck
  7. ruck rover
  8. ruck rovers
  9. ruck up
  10. Rucka
  11. rucked

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ruck (page history and authors); Ruck (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: En-au-ruck.ogg.

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