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smock

UK/smɒk/US/smɑk/
nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,683 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: smocks

A smock is a loose garment worn over clothes to protect them. An artist's smock, a painting smock, wear a smock.

It goes over the top and keeps the clothes underneath clean, which is why it belongs to painters, potters and schoolchildren. Smocking, the gathered decorative stitching, is named after it, because it was used to shape the loose cloth.

David Ring · CC0

Definitions of smock

  1. 1nounsmockA loose garment worn over clothes to protect them.C1

    “The children wore smocks over their school uniforms during the art lesson.”

smock is a garment.

Where it comes from

Old English smoc, from a Germanic root meaning something slipped into. It first meant a woman's undergarment.

  1. Proto-Germanic

    *smukkaz — something slipped into

  2. Old English

    smocc

  3. Middle English

    smok

  4. English, today

    smock

From Middle English smok, from Old English smocc, smoc, from Proto-Germanic smukkaz (“something slipped into”). Akin to Old High German smocho, Icelandic smokkur, and from the root of Old English smugan (“to creep”), akin to German schmiegen (“to cling to, press close”). Middle High German smiegen, Icelandic smjúga (“to creep through, to put on a garment which has a hole to put the head through”); compare with Lithuanian smukti (“to glide”). See also smug, smuggle.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

smock in the wild

  • A smock-frock or smock is an outer garment traditionally worn by rural workers, especially shepherds and waggoners.

    Smock-frock

  • The traditional smock-frock is made of heavy linen or wool and varies from thigh-length to mid-calf length.

    Smock-frock

  • Cardamine pratensis, the cuckoo flower, lady's smock, mayflower, or milkmaids, is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae.

    Cardamine pratensis

  • Contemporary photographs show that airborne troops preferred to wear the smocks under their webbing once they had landed.

    Denison smock

  • The post mill is Grade I listed and the smock mill is Grade II* listed.

    Drinkstone windmills

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.