Word Confusion: Chock vs Chook vs Chuck

Plural for the noun: chocks
Gerund: chocking

Third person present verb: chocks
Past tense or past participle: chocked
Present participle: chocking

Plural for the noun: chooks

Plural for the noun: chucks
Gerund: chucking

Third person present verb: chucks
Past tense or past participle: chucked
Present participle: chucking

Noun:
A wedge or block placed against a wheel or rounded object, to prevent it from moving

• A support on which a rounded structure, such as a cask or the hull of a boat, may be placed to keep it steady
• A wedge or block of wood, metal, or the like, for filling in a space, holding an object steady, etc.

A fitting with a gap at the top, through which a rope or line is run

[Nautical] Any of various heavy metal fittings on a deck or wharf that serve as fairleads for cables or chains

[Nautical] A small wooden piece or timber for filling a gap, reinforcing an angle, etc., in a wooden vessel

[Metalworking] A bearing supporting the end of a rolling mill

[Mining] A roof support made of cribbing filled with stones

• Large hydraulic jacks used to support a roof in longwall and shortwall mining systems

Verb, intransitive:
[Obsolete] To fill up, as a cavity

Verb, transitive:
Prevent the forward movement of (a wheel or vehicle) with a chock

• [Nautical] Support (a boat, cask, etc.) on chocks
• To furnish with or secure by a chock or chocks

[British] To cram full (usually followed by up)

Noun:
[Australian, New Zealand] A hen or chicken

• Chookie

[Australia, New Zealand, informal] A cooked chicken

• A chicken dressed for cooking

[Australia, dated] A fool

[Australian slang] A woman, especially a more mature one

[the chuck] A dismissal or rejection

A playful touch under the chin ²

A device for holding a workpiece in a lathe or a tool in a drill, typically having three or four jaws that move radially in and out ³

A cut of beef that extends from the neck to the ribs, typically used for stewing

[US; informal] Food or provisions ⁴

[Northern English; informal] Used as a friendly form of address ⁵

[North American] Short for woodchuck ⁶

[Physical Geography] A large body of water ⁷

• [North American; dialect] The sea, or an inlet of the sea which flows into a lake or river
• [Northern Canadian; west coast] Any body of salt water

[Disparaging slang] A white man ⁹

• White society, culture, and values

Proper Noun:
A male given name as a form of Charles ⁹

Verb, intransitive:
[Echoic] To make a clucking sound ⁸

[Rare] To chuckle

• To laugh

[Mainly US; slang] To vomit (usually followed by up)

[Cricket] To throw

• To bowl with an incorrect action

[South Africa; slang] To leave

• To depart
• To bounce

Verb, transitive:
[Informal] Throw (something) carelessly or casually ¹

• Throw (something) away

[Mainly British] Give up (a job or activity)

• End a relationship with (a partner)

Touch (someone) playfully or gently under the chin ²

“Tom Hickey, our good-humored, blundering cabin-boy, decorated since poor Schubert’s death with the dignities of cook, is in that little dirty cot on the starboard side; the rest are bedded in rows, Mr. Brooks and myself chock aft” (Kane, p 431).

“Merchant vessels usually hoist a little on the halyards, so as to clear the sail from the top, then belay them and get the lee sheet chock home; then haul home the weather sheet, shivering the sail by the braces to help it home, and hoist on the halyards until the leaches are well taut, taking a turn with the braces, if the wind is fresh, and slacking them as the yard goes up” (Dana).

Noun:
Their aircraft stood gently shuddering against their chocks.

The cask of ale is up on its chocks, boss.

“Artificial anchor points are those constructed from equipment carried by the team. These are usually the chocks or pitons placed in cracks or bolts drilled in the rock” (Tawrell).

“Before lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is taken aft from the tub, and passing round the logger-head there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man’s oar, so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately sit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out” (Melville, ch 9).

An open chock has jaws and an uncovered top; if the top forms an enclosed eye it is a closed chock.

Mooring lines are run from bitts on deck through chocks to bollards on a pier when the ship is moored.

Bilge keels, a.k.a. rolling chocks, are designed to dampen out rolling motions.

“The diameter of the roll body, less a certain amount for regrinding and the wall thickness of the chock, determines the outside diameter of the bearing” (Satyendra).

“To address these issues, various secondary standing supports including the timber chock, Propsetter system, and the CAN® support have been utilized together with traditional bolt reinforcement system for underground mines” (Zhao).

Verb, intransitive:
“When the bells ring, the wood-work thereof shaketh and grapeth (no defect, but perfect of structure), and exactly chocketh into the joynts again; so that it may pass for the lively embleme of the sincere Christian, who, though he hath motum trepidationis, of fear and trembling, stands firmly fixt on the basis of a true faith” (Fuller).

Verb, transitive:
The front wheel will need to be chocked.

Outside, chocked up on the waterfront, was a yacht.

“Gondolas with drop or hopper doors not boarded over should have lading cleated and chocked so as to prevent shifting over doors” (Railway).

“Alejandro jumped out and set the emergency brake (chocking the left rear wheel with a wood block he kept behind the cabina)” (McKenney, p 93).

The basement was chocked up with newspapers.

“Chook, chook, quack, quack, / Cock-a-doodle-doo; / All the ducks and the fowls / Admire me, they do” (Sydney).

Here chook, chook.

Noun:
“A great blackbird flew out with a loud ‘chook, chook’, and the red of the haw on his yellow bill” (Fairless).

“Worm chickens once every three months and, if an occasional lice problem occurs, spray the inside of the chook shed with Coopex” (Burke, p 683).

Your dog has half-killed most of the neighbor′s chooks.

Ye daft chook.

He made you look like a dirty chook.

I’ve lost the power-drill chuck!

It’s a three-jaw chuck.

The trays of fat-speckled chuck and sweetbreads had been put in the refrigerator.

Can I help you at all, chuck?

“We can conclude that a chuck could chuck (eat) 0.7979051766784 pounds of wood per day, and that it could chuck (toss) around 700 pounds of wood per day” (Nambiar).

“The ultimate consensus was to keep the de-Whited river Green to its Tukwila junction with the Black, the outlet of Lake Washington, then make it Duwamish the rest of the way to the saltchuck” (Manning, 155).

What’s that chuck doing here?

Let Grammy give her angel a little chuck.

Proper noun:
Chuck Norris hates trailer parks.

Chuck Taylor is the creator of chucks.

Chuck Berry was an amazing singer and widely known for “Roll Over, Beethoven”.

Verb, intransitive:
“There, the excrement was chucked into another apparatus that thoroughly mixed it with a disinfecting chemical blend, killing pathogens” (Zeldovich).

The chickens clucked and scratched in the dirt.

“Who would not chuck to see such pleasing sport.
To see such troupes of gallants still resort
unto Cornutos shop” (Marston).

He chucked up.

The bowler chucked.

Let’s chuck.

Verb, transitive:
Someone chucked a brick through the window.

Chucking money at the problem won’t solve it.

She kept the personal bits and pieces and chucked the rest.

She wanted to chuck her job.

Mary chucked him for another guy.

He chucked the baby under its chin.

1. Late 17th century (as a verb), from give up.
2. Early 17th century (as a noun) probably from the Old French chuquer, later choquer meaning to knock, bump, is of unknown ultimate origin.
3. Late 17th century, as a variant of chock; see also chunk, as a thick, solid piece of something.
4. Mid-19th century, perhaps the same word as chuck, as in a device for holding a workpiece in a lathe or a tool.
5. Late 16th century, as an alteration of chick, as in a young bird, especially one newly hatched.
6. Unknown.
7. Borrowed from Chinook Jargon, the sea, literally saltwater, from salt (the English salt) + chuck (water) from the Nootka č̕aʔak meaning water.
8. Middle English chuk, an expressive word, apparently imitative 1350–1400.
9. Used especially in the 1960s and 1970s by Black people arising from an analogy with Mister Charlie, a slang term used in the same sense and also derived from a nickname for Charles.