hock1
/hɒk
/noun
1The joint in a quadruped’s hind leg between the knee and the fetlock, the angle of which points backwards.These diseases can affect the shoulder, elbow, knee, or hock joints in animals....
- He had exceptional conformation, very correct legs, hocks, and knees.
- It primarily occurs in the shoulder or elbow joints, but it can affect the hocks or stifles, too.
2A knuckle of meat, especially of pork or ham.If you wish, add the meat from the hock and season with salt and pepper....
- Remove the ham hock, de-bone, dice, and add to the base.
- Use a smoked gammon knuckle, smoked ham hock or whatever smoked bacon bones you can find - or talk your butcher into selling you the ham bone when they get to the end of carving off the meat.
Origin
Late Middle English: variant of hough.
Rhymes
hock2
/hɒk/verb [with object] informal
Deposit (an object) with a pawnbroker as security for money lent.The enlisted servicemen and women hock stuff in the pawn shops and borrow against payday....
- They had concerns at the time that Herd would hock the cup for drinking money.
- We are pretty much the pimps of capitalism, hocking the wares of whoever shows us the money.
Phrases
in hock
Origin
Mid 19th century (in the phrase in hock): from Dutch hok 'hutch, prison, debt'.
hock3
/hɒk/noun [mass noun] British
A dry white wine from the German Rhineland.This name being a bit of a tongue twister for the petite bourgeoisie who were immediately attracted to it, the truncated version, hock, became the name for every wine from the Rhine....
- Lets have a glass of hock, shall we?
- The head of a boisterous party of ex-public schoolboys calls over the waiter and asks for a bottle of hock.
Origin
Abbreviation of obsolete hockamore, alteration of German Hochheimer (Wein) '(wine) from Hochheim'.