Other forms: padlocks
A padlock is a detachable lock you click shut through a chain or latch. A brass padlock, cut the padlock, padlock the gate.
Its point is that it is not fixed to anything: it goes wherever you need it, on a shed, a locker or a bicycle. The weak part is almost never the padlock body but the hasp or chain it hangs on, which is what a thief cuts.
1nounpadlockA detachable lock closed through a chain or latch.
“He locked his bike to the railing with a chain and a padlock.”
padlock is a lock.
Middle English padlok, from lok, a lock, plus a first element of unknown origin, perhaps meaning a basket or pannier.
Middle English
padlock
English, today
padlock
Built from
From earlier pad lock (19th c.); Middle English padlock, padlokke, from pad-, of unknown origin, + lok (“lock”). Perhaps originally a lock for a pad (“gate”), or a gate opening to a path, or a lock for a basket or pannier, from UK dialect pad (“a pannier”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA