Paddocking

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˈpædəkɪŋ/

Definitions

1. The act of confining livestock or horses within a designated fenced area for grazing or rest
2. Managing farm animals by placing them into a securely enclosed space called a paddock to control their movement
3. The process of containing animals in a bounded outdoor area to ensure their safety and regulate their feeding

Etymology: The word has a curious double life, because "paddock" is one of those English words that arrived at the same spot by two unrelated routes. One strand is the enclosure: "paddock" descends from Old English "pearroc", a fence or enclosed space, from a Proto-Germanic root for an enclosure or animal pen. It is a doublet of "park", the two words sharing that ancient ancestor and diverging over the centuries. Cognates in Dutch ("perk", a pen or flowerbed) and German ("Pferch", a sheep-pen) keep the sense alive elsewhere in Europe. The other strand is a frog. Middle English "paddok" meant a frog or toad, built from "pad", a dialect word for the same creature, plus the diminutive suffix "-ok". How a toad became a field is not an accident of sound: the sledge sense of "paddock" probably comes from its supposed resemblance to a frog or toad. The two words are unrelated in origin, yet they merged in English, so a reader of "paddocking" is picking up an enclosure-word whose spelling was partly shaped by a amphibian.

Synonyms: enclosing, fencing