paddock

• IPA^(key): /ˈpædək/

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Alteration of Middle English parrok, parrock (“enclosure, fence, paddock”), from Old English pearroc, pearruc (“enclosure, fence”), from Proto-Germanic *parrukaz (“enclosure, fence”). Cognate with Dutch perk (“flowerbed, garden, pen”), German Pferch (“sheepfold, sheep-pen”), Danish park (“pond”). Related to park, spar.

paddock (plural paddocks)

1. A small enclosure or field of grassland, especially for horses.
   • 1945 August 17, George Orwell, chapter 1, in Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, London: Secker & Warburg, OCLC 3655473:

     […] the two of them usually spent their Sundays together in the small paddock beyond the orchard, grazing side by side and never speaking.

2. (Australia, New Zealand) A field of grassland of any size, especially for keeping sheep or cattle.
3. An area where horses are paraded and mounted before a race and unsaddled after a race.
4. Land, fenced or otherwise delimited, which is most often part of a sheep or cattle property.
5. (motor racing) An area at circuit where the racing vehicles are parked and worked on before and between races.
6. (field sports, slang) The playing field.

• heifer paddock
• long paddock
• paddockful
• Paddock Wood

paddock (third-person singular simple present paddocks, present participle paddocking, simple past and past participle paddocked)

1. (transitive) To provide with a paddock.
2. (transitive) To keep in, or place in, a paddock.

From Middle English paddok, equivalent to pad (“frog or toad”) +‎ -ock.

• padock (obsolete)

paddock (plural paddocks)

1. (archaic or dialectal) A frog or toad.
   • Wycliffe

     Soothly if thou wilt not deliver, lo! I shall smite all thy terms with paddocks. (Exodus 8:2)

   • Edmund Spenser

     The grisly toadstool grown there might I see, / And loathed paddocks lording on the same.

   • Shakespeare, Macbeth 1.1.10

     FIRST WITCH: I come, Graymalkin.
     SECOND WITCH: Paddock calls.
     THIRD WITCH: Anon.

• paddock pipe
• paddock stone
• paddock stool

paddock m (plural paddocks)

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

• “paddock” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

paddock m (plural paddocks)

1. (motor racing) paddock