wick

• IPA^(key): /wɪk/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪk

From Middle English weke, wicke (“wick”), from Old English wēoce (“wick”), from Proto-West Germanic *weukā (“flax bundle, wick”), from Proto-Indo-European *weg- (“to weave”).^[1]

Compare West Frisian wjok, wjuk (“wing”), Dutch wiek (“wing; propeller, blade; wick”), German Wieche (“wisp; wick”), Swedish veke (“wick”).

wick (plural wicks)

1. A bundle, twist, braid, or woven strip of cord, fabric, fibre, or other porous material in a candle, oil lamp, kerosene heater, or the like, that draws up liquid fuel, such as melted tallow, wax, or the oil, delivering it to the base of the flame for conversion to gases and burning; any other length of material burned for illumination in small successive portions.

   Trim the wick fairly short, so that the flame does not smoke.

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 30, page 333:

     But true it is that when the oyle is ſpent, / The light goes out, and weeke is throwne away;

2. Any piece of porous material that conveys liquid by capillary action, such as a strip of gauze placed in a wound to serve as a drain.
3. (curling) A narrow opening in the field, flanked by other players' stones.
4. (curling) A shot where the played stone touches a stationary stone just enough that the played stone changes direction.
5. (slang, euphemistic) The penis.
   • 2008, Marcus Van Heller, Nest of Vixens, →ISBN, page 17:

     His wick was stone stiff.

   • 2009, Ira Robbins, Kick It Till It Breaks, Trouser Press, →ISBN, page 130:

     Her laugh wasn't cruel in tone, but it cut through Husk like a scalpel, withering his wick even further.

• → Maori: wiki

wick (third-person singular simple present wicks, present participle wicking, simple past and past participle wicked)

1. (transitive) To convey or draw off (liquid) by capillary action.

   The fabric wicks perspiration away from the body.

2. (intransitive, of a liquid) To traverse (i.e. be conveyed by capillary action) through a wick or other porous material, as water through a sponge. Usually followed by through.

   The moisture slowly wicked through the wood.

3. (curling) To strike (a stone) obliquely; to strike (a stationary stone) just enough that the played stone changes direction.

From earlier Middle English wik, wich (“village, hamlet, town”); from Old English wīc (“dwelling place, abode”); Germanic borrowing from Latin vīcus (“village, estate”) (see vicinity).

It came to mean “dairy farm” around the 13th or 14th century; for instance, Gatwick (“Goat-farm”). Cognates include Old High German wîch, wih (“village”), German Weichbild (“municipal area”), Dutch wijk (“quarter, district”), Old Frisian wik, Old Saxon wic (“village”), as well as Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos, “house”), whence English eco-. Doublet of vicus and -wich.

wick (plural wicks)

1. (British, dialect, chiefly East Anglia and Essex) A farm, especially a dairy farm.

• Present in compounds (meaning “village”, “jurisdiction”, or “harbour”), as -wick, such as bailiwick, sheriffwick, Warwick, Greenwick, Gatwick, Southwick, Hampton Wick etc., also -wich. See also places named Wick.

• vicinity
• villa
• village
• -wich
• -wick

Inherited from Northern Middle English whyk (southern quyk), from Old English cwic (“alive”); similar to an archaic meaning of quick (“endowed with life; having a high degree of vigor, energy, or activity”), and quicken (“come to life”), to which it is related.

wick (comparative wicker or more wick, superlative wickest or most wick)

1. (British, dialect, derogatory, chiefly Yorkshire) Alive; lively; full of life; active; bustling; nimble; quick.

   as wick as an eel

   T' wickest young chap at ivver Ah seen.

   He's a strange wick bairn alus runnin' aboot.

   I'll skin ye wick! (skin you alive)

   I thowt they was dead last back end but they're wick enif noo.

   "Are you afraid of going across the churchyard in the dark?" "Lor' bless yer noä miss! It isn't dead uns I'm scar'd on, it's wick uns."

   (Can we date this quote?)

   • 1860, “The Yorkshire Horsedealer”, in Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England:

     I'll swop wi' him my poor deead^[sic] horse for his wick, […]

3. (British, dialect, derogatory, chiefly Yorkshire, of inanimate objects) resistant to being put to use, stiff, stubborn (as for example a rope or a screw).

• wicken

wick

1. (British, obsolete, dialect, chiefly Yorkshire) Liveliness; life.
2. (British, dialect, chiefly Yorkshire) The growing part of a plant nearest to the roots.

   Fed close? Why, it's eaten into t' hard wick. (spoken of a pasture which has been fed very close)

3. (British, dialect, chiefly Yorkshire, horticulture) (Usually plural) The parts of weed roots that remain viable in the ground after inadequate digging prior to cultivation.
4. (British, dialect, chiefly Yorkshire) A maggot.

From Middle English wike, wyke, probably from Old Norse *vik (“a bend, angle, corner”), from Proto-Germanic *wikwą, from Proto-Germanic *wīkwaną; related to Old Norse vikna (“to yield, cave in”), Old Norse víkja (“to move, bend, curve”).

wick (plural wicks)

1. (obsolete or dialectal) A corner or angle.
2. (obsolete or dialectal) A grove; a hollow.
3. (now dialectal) A corner of the mouth or eye.
   • 1969, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 12, in Ada, or, Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Harmondsworth, London: Penguin Books, published 1970, →ISBN, part 1, page 64:

     She considered him. A fiery droplet in the wick of her mouth considered him.

From Middle English *wik, from Old Norse vík (“bay”), from Proto-Germanic *wīkō. Cognate with Old English wīc (“bight, creek, inlet”).

wick (plural wicks)

1. (obsolete or Northern England, Scotland) An inlet or bay.

• "wick" in BBC - North Yorkshire - Voices - Glossary
• Notes and Queries, Tenth Series, Vol. IV, 1905, page 170
• A. Smythe Palmer, Folk-Etymology, A Dictionary of verbal corruptions or words perverted in form or meaning, by false derivation or mistaken analogy, 1882, page xxii
• John Christopher Atkinson, A glossary of the Cleveland dialect: explanatory, derivative, and critical, 1868, page 573
• W. D. Parish, Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect and Collection of Provincialisms in use in the County of Sussex, 1877, page 274-5
• “wick”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “wick”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

• Cwik, KWIC

• weck (most of Ripuarian)
• wiet (Ripuarian)
• weit (Moselle Franconian)

From Middle High German wīt, from Old High German (*)wīd, northern variant of wīt, from Proto-Germanic *wīdaz.

The word underwent the regular Ripuarian velarisation -īd- → -igd- → -ig-.

• IPA^(key): /ʋik/

wick (masculine wigge, feminine and plural wick or wigge, comparative wigger, superlative et wickste)

1. (Kölsch) far, wide, distant

   Nemm et Auto, der Wääch es ze wick für ze laufe.

   Take the car, the distance is too far to walk.

wick

1. Alternative form of wikke

• wike, wik

From Norwegian vik, from Old Norse vík, from víkja (“to move, bend, curve”), from Proto-Germanic *wīkwaną.

• IPA^(key): /wɪk/

wick (plural wicks)

1. an open bight or inlet of the sea, a bay

   Walter Scott (1821) The Pirate (in Scots): “By air and by wick, and by helyer and gio, And by every wild shore which the northern winds know.”

• “wick”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC.

• wik

From Middle English wycke, variant of weke, from Old English wiċe, from Proto-West Germanic *wikā.

• IPA^(key): /wɪk/
• Homophone: whick

wick

1. week

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 78