Clock

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /klɒk/

Definitions

1. A timekeeping instrument that shows hours and minutes with visual markers and can be mechanical or electronic in nature
2. A device designed to measure and display the passage of time, often marked by numbers and hands or digital readouts
3. An apparatus used for indicating the current time by means of a dial and hands or a numerical screen, usually powered by batteries or electricity

Etymology: The surprise here is that the device is named after the bell. Medieval Latin "clocca" meant a bell, and the word spread through Old Dutch and Middle Dutch, where "clocke" covered both bells and the new mechanical timekeepers that began appearing in European towers. English borrowed it around 1370 as "clokke," and for a time it kept the bell sense in the same breath as the time-telling sense. The word's roots are older still and probably Celtic. Proto-Celtic "*klokkos" meant "bell," and related forms survive in Welsh "cloch" and Old Irish "cloc." Whether the root is imitative of a ringing sound or connects to a Proto-Indo-European word for laughing or cackling is uncertain. The same family gave English "cloak" and "cloche," which share the root through Latin "clocca." The clock's name also turned up in a playful sense. A dandelion's seed head is called a clock, from a children's game in which blowing away the seeds was said to tell the time, one puff per hour.

Synonyms: timepiece, watch, timer