paddock

See also: Paddock

English
WOTD – 23 November 2022

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

The noun is almost certainly a variant of dialectal British parrock (“enclosure; park; croft, small field, paddock”),[1] from Middle English parrok, parrock (“enclosed pasture, paddock; coop; feeding stall; cabin, hut”) [and other forms],[2] 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”). Doublet of park.

The verb is derived from the noun.[3]

cognates

Noun

paddock (plural paddocks)

  1. (also figuratively) A small enclosure or field of grassland, especially one used to exercise or graze horses or other animals.
    • 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter VII, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volume III, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 126:
      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.
    • 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:
      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.
    • 1844, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Essay VI. Nature.”, in Essays: Second Series, Boston, Mass.: James Munroe and Company, →OCLC, page 190:
      [H]e has delineated estates of romance, from which their actual possessions are shanties and paddocks.
    • 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:
      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.
    • [1885], [Mary Elizabeth Braddon], “After the Inquest”, in Wyllard’s Weird. […], volume I, London: John and Robert Maxwell […], →OCLC, page 69:
      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.
    • 1938, Graham Greene, chapter 1, in Brighton Rock, London: William Heinemann & The Bodley Head, published 1970, →ISBN, part 5, page 162:
      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.
    • 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:
      [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.
  2. (by extension)
    1. (horse racing) An enclosure next to a racecourse where horses are paraded and mounted before a race and unsaddled after a race.
      • 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:
        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.
      • 1931 November, John Galsworthy, chapter XXIV, in Maid in Waiting, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: The Ryerson Press, published 1931, →OCLC, page 211:
        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.
    2. (motor racing) An area at a racing circuit where the racing vehicles are parked and worked on before and between races.
    3. (sports, slang) A field on which a game is played; a playing field.
    4. (Australia, New Zealand) 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.
    5. (chiefly Australia, New Zealand, mining) 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
Translations
field on which a game is played — see playing field

Verb

paddock (third-person singular simple present paddocks, present participle paddocking, simple past and past participle paddocked) (transitive, chiefly Australia, New Zealand)

  1. (often passive voice) To place or keep (cattle, horses, sheep, or other animals) within a paddock (noun sense 1 or 2.4); hence, to provide (such animals) with pasture.
    • 1873, Anthony Trollope, “[South Australia.] Wool.”, in Australia and New Zealand. […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 214:
      In the district of which I am speaking the sheep are all "paddocked," —that is to say, kept in by fences—so that shepherding is unnecessary.
  2. To enclose or fence in (land) to form a paddock.
    • 1873, Anthony Trollope, “[New South Wales.] Country Life in the Bush.”, in Australia and New Zealand. […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 302:
      When a run is "paddocked," shepherds are not required;—but boundary-riders are employed, each of whom is supplied with two horses, and these men are responsible not only for the sheep but for the fences.
  3. (mining)
    1. (also intransitive) To excavate washdirt (“earth rich enough in metal to pay for washing”) from (a superficial deposit).
    2. (obsolete) To store (ore, washdirt, etc.) in a paddock (noun sense 2.5).
Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English paddok, paddoke (“frog; toad”) [and other forms],[4] from pad, pade (“frog; toad”)[5] + -ok (diminutive suffix).[6] Pad, pade is derived from Old English *pada, *padda, padde, from Proto-West Germanic *paddā, from Proto-Germanic *paddǭ (“toad”); further etymology uncertain, possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew- (“to swell”). The English word is analysable as pad (“(Britain, dialectal) frog; toad”) +‎ -ock (suffix forming nouns, originally with diminutive senses).[7]

Sense 2 (“sledge”) is probably from the supposed resemblance of the object to a frog or toad.

Noun

paddock (plural paddocks)

  1. (chiefly Northern England, Northern Ireland, Scotland)
    1. A frog.
      Cold as a paddock.
      • [c. 1382–1395, John Wycliffe [et al.], edited by Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, The Holy Bible, […], volume I (in Middle English), Oxford: At the University Press, published 1850, →OCLC, Exodus VIII:1–3, page 208, column 2:
        Also the Lord seide to Moises, Entre thou to Farao, and thou schalt seie to hym, The Lord seith these thingis, Delyuere thou my puple, that it make sacrifice to me; sotheli if thou nylt delyuere, lo! Y schal smyte alle thi termys with paddoks; and the flood schal buyle out paddokis, […]
        Also the Lord said to Moses, enter thou to Pharaoh, and thou shalt say to him, The Lord saith these things, Deliver thou my people, that it make sacrifice to me; soothly [truly] if thou nilt [wilt not] deliver, lo! I shall smite all thy terms [lands] with paddocks; and the flood shall boil out paddocks; […]]
      • 1608, Edward Topsell, “Of the Paddcke[sic] or Crooked Backe Frogge”, in The Historie of Serpents. Or, The Second Booke of Liuing Creatures: […], London: […] William Jaggard, →OCLC, pages 186–187:
        It is apparent that there be three kinds of Frogs of the earth, the firſt is the little greene Frog: the ſecond is this Padocke, hauing a crooke back, called in Latine Rubeta Gibboſa, and the third is the Toade, commonly called Rubotax, Bufo. […] As ſoone as theſe Paddocks come once into the ayre, out of their cloſe places of generation and habitation, they ſvvell and ſo die.
      • 1697, Virgil, “The Third Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, page 120, lines 812–813:
        The vvater-Snake, vvhom Fiſh and Paddocks fed, / VVith ſtaring Scales lies poyſon'd in his Bed: […]
      • [1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], “[XIV]”, in Rob Roy. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC, pages 307–308:
        Ower mony maisters—ower mony maisters, as the paddock said to the harrow, when every tooth gae her a tig.
        Reproducing Scots speech.]
      • 1938, Graham Greene, chapter 3, in Brighton Rock, London: William Heinemann & The Bodley Head, published 1970, →ISBN, part 3, page 111:
        He put out his hand with repulsion; it lay like a cold paddock on her knee.
    2. A toad.
      • 1579, Immeritô [pseudonym; Edmund Spenser], “December. Ægloga Duodecima.”, in The Shepheardes Calender: […], London: […] Hugh Singleton, […], →OCLC; reprinted as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer, editor, The Shepheardes Calender […], London: John C. Nimmo, […], 1890, →OCLC, folio 49, verso:
        Where I was wont to ſeeke the honey Bee, / Working her formall rowmes in Wexen frame: / The grieſlie Todeſtoole growne there mought I ſe / And loathed Paddocks lording on the ſame.
        Where I was wont to seek the honey bee, / Working her formal rooms in waxen frame: / The grisly toadstool grown there might I see / And loathed paddocks lording on the same.
      • c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i], page 131, column 1:
        Padock calls anon: faire is foule, and foule is faire, / Houer through the fogge and filthie ayre.
        “Padock” is a spirit in the shape of a toad. (The First Folio probably contains a misprint; “Padock calls.” is spoken by the second witch, “Anon!” by the third witch, and then all three witches say in unison “Faire is foule, and foule is faire, […]”.)
      • 1870, William Morris, “October: The Man Who Never Laughed Again”, in The Earthly Paradise: A Poem, part III, London: F[rederick] S[tartridge] Ellis, […], →OCLC, page 240:
        [F]rom the hall wherein the mourners died / A grey wolf glared, and o'er his head the bat / Hung, and the paddock on the hearth-stone sat.
    3. (derogatory) A contemptible, or malicious or nasty, person.
      Synonyms: see Thesaurus:jerk
  2. (Scotland) A simple, usually triangular, sledge which is dragged along the ground to transport items.
Alternative forms
Derived terms
  • paddock pipe
  • paddock stone
  • paddock-stool, paddock stool
  • shell-paddock
Translations
frog — see frog
toad — see toad
contemptible, or malicious or nasty, person — see jerk

References
  1. “paddock, n.2”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2022; “paddock, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  2. “par(r)ok, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  3. “paddock, v.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2022; “paddock, v.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  4. “paddok(e, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  5. “pad(e, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  6. “-ok, suf.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
  7. “paddock, n.1”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, June 2022.

Further reading

French

Etymology

Borrowed from English paddock.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /pa.dɔk/
  • Audio(file)

Noun

paddock m (plural paddocks)

  1. paddock
  2. (slang) pad (bed)

Further reading

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from English paddock. Doublet of parque.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ˈpadok/ [ˈpa.ð̞ok]
  • Rhymes: -adok

Noun

paddock m (plural paddocks)

  1. (motor racing) paddock
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