- [countable] the middle joint of an animal’s back legTopics Animalsc2
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- [uncountable, countable] (British English) a German white wine
- (also knuckle)[uncountable, countable] a piece of meat from the lower part of an animal’s leg, especially a pig
- [uncountable] (informal) if something that you own is in hock, you have exchanged it for money but hope to buy it back later
Word Originnoun sense 1 and noun sense 3 late Middle English: variant of hough. noun sense 2abbreviation of obsolete hockamore, alteration of German Hochheimer (Wein) ‘(wine) from Hochheim’. noun sense 4 mid 19th cent. (in the phrase in hock): from Dutch hok ‘hutch, prison, debt’.
Idioms
See hock in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionarybe in hock (to somebody)
- to owe somebody something
- I'm in hock to the bank for £6 000.
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hock