paddock
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈpædək/
ipa: /ˈpædək/
ipa: /-dɪk/
rhymes: -ædək
Forms: form: paddocks
Etymology: The noun is almost certainly a variant of dialectal British parrock (“enclosure; park; croft, small field, paddock”), from Middle English parrok, parrock (“enclosed pasture, paddock; coop; feeding stall; cabin, hut”) [and other forms], from Old English pearroc, pearruc (“fence used to enclose a space; area enclosed by such a fence, enclosure”), from Proto-West Germanic *parruk (“enclosure; pen for animals”), from Proto-Germanic *parrukaz (“fence; enclosure”); further etymology uncertain, perhaps related to Proto-Germanic *barō (“bar, beam; barrier”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰerH- (“to pierce; to strike”). Equivalent to park + -ock. Doublet of park.
The verb is derived from the noun.
Cognates
* Danish park (“pond”)
* Dutch perk (“flowerbed; garden; pen”)
* German Pferch (“sheepfold, sheep-pen”)
Senses: examples: text: Upon this information, they instantly passed through the hall once more, and ran across the lawn after their father, who was deliberately pursuing his way towards a small wood on one side of the paddock.
ref: 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter VII, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volume III, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 126:
text: A jargonell pear tree at one end of the cottage, a rivulet, and flower-plot of a rood in extent, in front, and a kitchen-garden behind; a paddock for a cow, and a small field, cultivated with several crops of grain rather for the benefit of the cottager than for sale, announced the warm and cordial comforts which Old England, even at her most northern extremity, extends to her meanest inhabitants.
ref: 1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter V, in Rob Roy. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, page 92:
text: [H]e has delineated estates of romance, from which their actual possessions are shanties and paddocks.
ref: 1844, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Essay VI. Nature.”, in Essays: Second Series, Boston, Mass.: James Munroe and Company, →OCLC, page 190:
text: They were not members of a country where literature is confined to its little paddock, without influence on the larger field (part lawn, part marsh) of the social world: they were readers in sympathetic action with thinkers and literary artists.
ref: 1880, George Meredith, chapter II, in The Tragic Comedians. A Study in a Well-known Story. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1881, →OCLC, page 25:
text: There was only the extent of a wide paddock and a lawn between the hall-door and that grand old gateway, and the house, though substantial and capacious, hardly pretended to the dignity of a mansion.
ref: [1885], [Mary Elizabeth Braddon], “After the Inquest”, in Wyllard’s Weird. […], volume I, London: John and Robert Maxwell […], →OCLC, page 69:
text: The Queen of Hearts was floodlit behind the petrol pumps: a Tudor barn converted, a vestige of a farmyard left in the arrangement of the restaurant and bars: a swimming pool where the paddock had been.
ref: 1938, Graham Greene, chapter 1, in Brighton Rock, London: William Heinemann & The Bodley Head, published 1970, →ISBN, part 5, page 162:
text: [T]he two of them [Benjamin the donkey and Boxer the cart-horse] usually spent their Sundays together in the small paddock beyond the orchard, grazing side by side and never speaking.
ref: 1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter I, in Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished as Animal Farm (eBook no. 0100011h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, March 2008:
glosses: A small enclosure or field of grassland, especially one used to exercise or graze horses or other animals.
examples: text: We left the carriage, bought programmes, and walked across the infield and then across the smooth thick turf of the course to the paddock. […] The paddock was fairly well filled with people and they were walking the horses around in a ring under the trees behind the grand stand.
ref: 1929 May–October, Ernest Hemingway, chapter 20, in A Farewell to Arms, 1st British edition, London: Jonathan Cape […], published 1929, →OCLC, book II, page 138:
text: You remind me of a two-year-old, Dinny—one of those whipcordy chestnuts that kick up their heels in the paddock, get left at the post, and come in first after all.
ref: 1931 November, John Galsworthy, chapter XXIV, in Maid in Waiting, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: The Ryerson Press, published 1931, →OCLC, page 211:
topics: hobbies
horse-racing
horseracing
horses
lifestyle
pets
racing
sports
glosses: An enclosure next to a racecourse where horses are paraded and mounted before a race and unsaddled after a race.
topics: hobbies
lifestyle
motor-racing
racing
sports
glosses: An area at a racing circuit where the racing vehicles are parked and worked on before and between races.
topics: hobbies
lifestyle
sports
glosses: A field on which a game is played; a playing field.
glosses: A field of grassland of any size, either enclosed by fences or delimited by geographical boundaries, especially a large area for keeping cattle or sheep.
topics: business
mining
glosses: A place in a superficial deposit where ore or washdirt (“earth rich enough in metal to pay for washing”) is excavated; also, a place for storing ore, washdirt, etc.
Derived terms: a kangaroo loose in the top paddock
kangaroos in the top paddock
long paddock
paddockful
paddock-stool
Paddock Wood
Pagan's paddock