Other forms: yokes
A yoke is a wooden frame joining two oxen, or a heavy burden. Under the yoke, throw off the yoke.
The figurative sense is oppression, since a yoked animal goes where it is driven. In a garment the yoke is the piece across the shoulders that everything else hangs from.
1nounyokeA wooden frame joining two oxen, or a heavy burden.
“The yoke in the barn had not been used in eighty years.”
yoke is a frame.
Old English geoc is related to Latin iugum and to the Sanskrit root that gives yoga.
Proto-Indo-European
*yewg-
Proto-Indo-European
*yugóm — yoke
Proto-Germanic
*juką — yoke
Proto-West Germanic
*juk
Old English
ġeoc
Middle English
iuc
English, today
yoke
Built from
From Middle English iuc, jok, yok, yoke, ȝok, ȝook, from Old English ġeoc, ġioc, ioc (“yoke”), from Proto-West Germanic juk, from Proto-Germanic juką (“yoke”), from Proto-Indo-European yugóm (“yoke”), from yewg- (“to join, yoke”). a doublet of yuga, jugum, yoga and possibly yogh. Senses 3.1 (“area of arable land”) and 3.2 (“amount of work done with draught animals”) probably referred to the area of land that could generally be ploughed by yoked draught animals within a given time. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA