Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Puck |
PuckNoun1. A mischievous sprite of English folklore. 2. A vulcanized rubber disk 3 inches in diameter that is used instead of a ball in ice hockey. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "Puck" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1596. (references) |
Etymology: Puck \Puck\, noun. [Old English pouke; compare to Old Swedish puke, Icelandic p[=u]ki an evil demon, Welsh pwca a hobgoblin. Compare to Pokera bugbear, Pug.]. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Literature | Puck or Robin Goodfellow, A fairy and merry wanderer of the night, "rough, knurly-limbed, faun-faced, and shock-pated, a very Shetlander among the gossamer-winged" fairies around him. (See Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, ii. 1; iii. 1.). Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
A puck is a hard rubber disk used in ice hockey, one inch thick (25.4 mm) and 3 inches in diameter (76.2 mm), and weighing between 5.5 to 6 oz (156-170 g). It is frozen a few hours before the game to prevent bouncing. Pucks can reach speed of 100 mph (160 km/h) when hit by players' sticks, and spectators at hockey games are occasionally injured. On March 18, 2002, a teenage girl was killed by a hockey puck at an NHL game.The origin of the word is obscure, but evidently not connected to Shakespeare's Puck or the mythical Puck. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests the name is related to the verb to puck (a cognate of poke) used in hurling for striking or pushing the ball.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Hockey puck."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
See
- Puck (mythology), a nature spirit
- Puck (Shakespeare), from A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Hockey puck, the "ball" used to play ice hockey
- Puck (moon), a moon of Uranus
- Puck, Poland, a city in Poland
- Puck (The Real World), reality T.V. cast-member
- Puck (magazine), a 19th Century U.S. periodical
- Puck (goat), a wild specially captured goat crowned "King Puck" at Puck Fair every year in Ireland
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Puck."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Puck was a U.S periodical published in New York from 1876 to 1918, originally in German and from 1877 in English as well. It was known for its colored cartoons on political and social issues."Puckish" meaning "childishly mischievous" is a 19th-century usage of the word, which led Shakespeare's Puck to be recast for the title of the satirical magazine, guided by cartoonist/editor Joseph Keppler. The cover quoted Puck saying, " "What fools these mortals be!" It was bought up by William Randolph Hearst in 1917 and closed down in 1918. The jaunty symbol of Puck, cast in zinc (as many inexpensive Civil War monuments were) and gilded, is conceived as a putto in a top hat who admires himself in a hand mirror over the building's Lafayette Street entrance, but over a second entrance he turns his mirror down to reflect the passer-by.
The Puck Building. Puck Magazine was housed from 1887 in the landmark Chicago-style Romanesque Revival Puck Building at Lafayette and Houston Streets, New York City. The steel-frame building was designed by architects Albert and Herman Wagner in 1885, as the world's largest lithographic pressworks under a single roof, with its own electricity-generating dynamo. It takes up a full block on Houston Street, bounded by Lafayette and Mulberry Streets.
- Puck 's Puck illustrated.
- http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ARTpuck.htm Puck magazine influenced the development of cartoons.]
- American cast zinc sculpture.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Puck (magazine)."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Puck Discovery Discovered by Voyager 2 Discovered in 1985 Orbital characteristics Mean radius 86004 km Eccentricity 0.00005 Orbital period 0.76183d Inclination 0.31° Is a satellite of Uranus Physical characteristics Equatorial diameter ~162 km Surface area km2 Mass 2.89×1018 kg Mean density 1.3 g/cm3 Surface gravity 0.029 m/s2 Rotation period ? Axial tilt ?° Albedo 0.07 Surface temp
min mean max K K K Atmospheric pressure 0 kPa Puck is a moon of Uranus. It was discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986. Little is known about it aside from its orbit, its size, and its dark albedo (approximately 0.07).
In Celtic mythology and English folklore, Puck is a mischievous tricky sprite, originally an evil demon, but better known as a character in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream who travels around the globe at night with the fairies. Most of the moons of Uranus are named after characters in Shakespeare or Alexander Pope.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Puck (moon)."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Puck is a mischievous pre-Christian nature spirit, a "woodwose" in the archetype of the Horned God. The pagan trickster was reimagined in Old English puca (cf. Old Norse puki "devil") as a kind of half-tamed woodland sprite, leading folk astray with echoes and lights in nighttime woodlands or coming into the farmstead and souring milk in the churn. Significantly for such a place-spirit or genius, the Old English word occurs mainly in placenames, which strongly suggests that the Puca was older in the landscape of Britain than the language itself. Since the O.E.D. debates whether the origin is Germanic (Old Norse puki) or Celtic (Welsh pwcca and Irish pooka), Puck's origins may lie on an even deeper language layer, before the Celtic and North Germanic language families split..Since, if you "speak of the Devil" he will appear, Puck's euphemistic "disguised" name is "Robin Goodfellow" or "Hobgoblin," in which "Hob" may substitute for "Rob" or may simply refer to the "goblin of the hearth" or hob.
If you had the knack, Puck might do minor housework for you, quick fine needlework or butter-churning, which could be undone in a moment by his knavish tricks, if you fell out of favor with him: "Those that Hob-goblin call you, and sweet Puck, You do their work, and they shall have good luck" said one of Shakespeare's fairies. Shakespeare's characterization of "shrewd and knavish" Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream may have revived flagging interest in Puck.
An early 17th century broadside ballad, "The Mad Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow", which is so deft and literate it has been taken for the work of Ben Jonson, describes Puck/Robin Goodfellow as the emissary of Oberon, the faery king, inspiring night-terrors in old women but also carding their wool while they sleep, leading travellers astray, taking the shape of animals, blowing out the candles to kiss the girls in the darkness, twitching off their bedclothes, or making them fall out of bed on the cold floor, tattling secrets, and changing babes in cradles with elflings. All his work is done by moonlight, and his mocking, echoing laugh is "Ho ho ho!"
Milton, in L'Allegro "Tells how the drudging Goblin swet/ To earn his cream-bowle duly set" by threshing a week's worth of grain in a night, and then "stretch'd out all the chimney's length,/Basks at the fire his hairy strength." Milton's Puck is not small and sprightly, but nearer to a Green Man or a hairy woodwose. For followers of neo-Pagan imagery, sometimes the influence of Pan imagery has now given Puck the hindquarters and cloven hooves of a goat. He may even have small horns. In Ireland "puck" is said to be sometimes used for "goat".
Puck's trademark laugh in the early ballads is "Ho ho ho." In modern mythology, the "merry old elf" who works with magical swiftness unseen in the night, who can "descry each thing that's done beneath the moone," whom we propitiate with a glass of milk, lest he put lumps of coal in the stockings we hang by the hob with care, and whose trademark laugh is "Ho ho ho" --is Santa Claus.
In Rudyard Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill (1906), Puck, the last of the People of the Hills and "the oldest thing in England," charms the children Dan and Una with a collection of tales and visitors out of England's past.
Puck has also been loosely re-imagined in many modern comics, but the house-elf Dobby in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series stays closer to the traditional qualities of Robin Goodfellow.
External Links
- A Puck website gives the text of early 17th century ballads of Robin Goodfellow.
- A folklore page, with a 1639 Puritan image of a demonized Puck
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Puck (mythology)."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Puck was a character in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, also known as Robin Goodfellow. A bit of a troublemaker in the play, he puts love-in-idleness juice on the eyes of Demetrius and sticks an ass's head on Bottom so he can fall in love with Titania the queen of the fairies. He puts love-in-idleness in the rest of the lovers eyes too and confuses everyone. See also: Puck (mythology)Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Puck (Shakespeare)."
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Puck is a town on the south coasts of the Baltic Sea in Eastern Pomerania region, north-western Poland with some 12,000 inhabitants.
It is the capital of Puck County in Pomeranian Voivodship since 1999, previously a town in Gdansk Voivodship (1975-1998).
Population
1950: ? inhabitants
1960: 6,800 inhabitants
1970: 9,300 inhabitants
1975: 10,500 inhabitants
1980: 11,100 inhabitants
1990: ? inhabitants
1995: ? inhabitants
1998: 11,600 inhabitants
2000: ? inhabitantsSource: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Puck, Poland."
Synonym: PuckSynonym: hockey puck (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Demon | Vampire, ghoul; afreet, barghest, Loki; ogre, ogress; gnome, gin, jinn, imp, deev, lamia; bogie, bogeyman, bogle; nis, kobold, flibbertigibbet, fairy, brownie, pixy, elf, dwarf, urchin; Puck, Robin Goodfellow; leprechaun, Cluricaune, troll, dwerger, sprite, ouphe, bad fairy, nix, nixie, pigwidgeon, will-o'-the wisp. |
Unskillfulness | Play tricks with, play Puck, mismanage, misconduct, misdirect, misapply, missend. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Puck |
| English words defined with "Puck": face-off ♦ goal ♦ hockey, hockey game, hockey stick ♦ ice hockey, icing, icing the puck ♦ offence, offense, offside, offsides ♦ poke check. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "Puck": House Spirits ♦ kicksave ♦ Puff-ball. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "Puck": Puckish. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Puck" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. German (puck), Swedish (puck). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | It's knuckle puck time (D2: The Mighty Ducks; writing credit: Steven Brill) Do you always carry a puck with you (Happy Gilmore; writing credit: Tim Herlihy; Adam Sandler) I'll make you a bet. If you get this puck into that net, I'll never bother you again (Happy Gilmore; writing credit: Tim Herlihy; Adam Sandler) That's my puck, baby, don't you ever touch my puck (Happy Gilmore; writing credit: Tim Herlihy; Adam Sandler) I need a valium the size of a hockey puck. (Broadway Danny Rose; writing credit: Woody Allen) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Puck heter jag (1951) Mischievous Puck (1911) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
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High Tech |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Dr. Kilmer's Indian Cough Cure Consumption Oil. / J. Ottmann. Lith. Puck Bldg., N.Y. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |  | Sulphur Bitters : Calendar 1890 / J. Ottmann Lith., Puck Bldg., N.Y. Credit: National Library of Medicine. |
 | Pickings from Puck. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Boy looking in lighted window with Puck and owl. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Puck (?) distributing information about the "silver question" to farmers confused about tariff reform. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Save Niagara Falls -- from this / J.S. Pughe ; J. Ottmann Lith. Co., Puck Bldg., N.Y. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Columbia (to the three territories) - Your stars shall be put on the flag just as soon as those politicians in Congress will let me / Keppler ; J. Ottmann Lith. Co., Puck Bldg., N.Y. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Puck hopes - that Philadelphia will follow the good example of Brooklyn and New York / Dalrymple. Credit: Library of Congress. |
 | Buffalo Bill's Wild West--Col. W.F. Cody / Puck ; P.F. Ritchie. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Ride a Stearns and be content / J. Ottmann Lith. Co., Puck Bld'g, N.Y. Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
 |
| "Sunbath" by Marcin Sobolew Commentary: "Photo has been made late summer 2002 at Baltic Sea , Gulf of Puck. It was summer to remember :)." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| "Puck" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 57.58% of the time. "Puck" is used about 33 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 57.58% | 19 | 80,337 |
| Noun (proper) | 24.24% | 8 | 124,375 |
| Lexical Verb (base form) | 18.18% | 6 | 143,867 |
| Total | 100.00% | 33 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "Puck": hockey puck ♦ icing the puck ♦ play Puck. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "Puck": puck-ish, puck-like. | |
Ending with "Puck": off-the-puck. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "Puck"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | top hokeji, thopërç (little demon), qipull (pixy). (various references) | |
Arabic | قرص لعبة الهوكي, عفريت (demon, evil genius, evil spirit, genius, gnome, goblin, imp, pixy, rascal, rogue, tinker). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | шайба (clout, disc, disk, rigger, sheave, shim, stud, stuffing, washer), дух пакостник. (various references) | |
Chinese | 淘气的小孩, 冰球 (ice hockey). (various references) | |
Czech | puk (crease), touš, šotek (brownie, gremlin, hobgoblin, imp). (various references) | |
Danish | puck (puck for ice hockey). (various references) | |
Dutch | hockeypuck (puck for ice hockey). (various references) | |
Finnish | jääkiekko. (various references) | |
French | palet, lutin. (various references) | |
German | Scheibe (bit-slice, dial, disc, disk, glass, layer, pane, plate, plug, pulley, rasher, segment, sheet, slab, slice, target, wafer, washer, wheel, window). (various references) | |
Greek | καουτσούκ (caoutchouc, rubber), ξωτικό (elf, hob, hobgoblin, pixy, sprite), δαιμόνιο (daemon, demon, elf, hob, imp), δίσκοσ (disc, discus, disk, salver, server, tray, waiter). (various references) | |
Hungarian | korong (disc, disk, spool, turntable). (various references) | |
Italian | disco (dial, disc, discus, disk, diskette, grammophone, grammophone disc, record). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | パチンコ台 (glassed-over arcade, pachinkomachine, pack, package, package media, package program, package tour, packaging, Packard, packing, pad, paddle, paddling, paddock, Panama, Panamax, Panasert hole, panavision, pap, passage, passenger, passing, passion, passionate, passive, passive smoking, passive solar house, passive sonar, pat, patch, patch test, patchwork, pate, patent, pathos, patio, patriotism, patrol, patrol car, patron, patting, priest, putt, putting, putting green, putty, rotating warning light similar to the one on a "patokaa."). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | パック (pack). (various references) | |
Manx | trollag (dwarf, elf, gnome, pixie, sprite, troll), sooane (liquor, wash-brew), claare sooane. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | uckpay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | gnomo (dwarf, elf, gnome, goblin, hop-o'-my-thumb), duende maldoso, diabrete (elfin, urchin), criança endiabrada. (various references) | |
Russian | шайба (hockey puck, rove, shim, spacer, washer). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | pak, stočna bolest, đavo od deteta. (various references) | |
Spanish | duende (brownie, daemon, duende, elf, goblin, hob, hobgoblin, leprechaun, poltergeist, sprite). (various references) | |
Swedish | tomte (brownie, sprite). (various references) | |
Turkish | yaramaz çocuk (elf, hellion, holy terror, limb, terror, urchin), cin (clever person, demon, elf, Geneva, genie, gin, gnome, Goblin, gremlin, hob, hobgoblin, Hollands, jinnee, sprite, white satin), buz hokeyi diski, afacan peri (poltergeist). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | шайба (disc, disk, rubber, shim, washer), шибеник (brat, elfin, hanger, varmint, villain, wag), пустун (hellion, imp, monkey, rogue, urchin, wag), дрімлюга (goatsucker, night hawk, night owl). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "Puck": pucka, pucker, puckered, puckerer, puckerers, puckerier, puckeriest, puckering, puckers, puckery, puckish, puckishly, puckishness, puckishnesses, pucks. (additional references) | |
Words containing "Puck": unpucker, unpuckered, unpuckering, unpuckers. (additional references) | |
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"Puck" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Auck, epock, Pauk, pcu, Phucke, piuck, pruck, psuc, puc, Puca, pucca, pucci, puch, Pucik, pucky, puek, puick, puk, puki, pukkah, puko, pulk, Puok, purk, Puska, puuk, pux, Pyck, Uccc, uck, Ucko, ukccc, upc, zuck. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "Puck" (pronounced pu"k) |
| 2 | -u" k | amok, amuck, buck, chuck, cluck, duck, guck, Huck, luck, muck, pluck, ruck, schmuck, Shuck, snuck, struck, stuck, suck, truck, tuck, unstuck, yuck, yuk. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "c-k-p-u" | |
-1 letter: cup. | |
-2 letters: up. | |
| Words containing the letters "c-k-p-u" | |
+1 letter: pluck, pucka, pucks. | |
+2 letters: backup, cockup, kickup, lockup, mockup, pickup, plucks, plucky, pucker, unpack, unpick, uptick. | |
+3 letters: backups, checkup, cockups, crackup, cupcake, cuplike, duckpin, ketchup, kickups, kingcup, lockups, mockups, mudpack, nutpick, pickups, plucked, plucker, potluck, puckers, puckery, puckish, stackup, stickup, unpacks, unpicks, upchuck, upticks, wickiup, wickyup. | |
+4 letters: checkups, chipmuck, chipmunk, cockspur, crackups, cupcakes, duckpins, humpback, ketchups, keypunch, kingcups, mudpacks, nutpicks, penuckle, pluckers, pluckier, pluckily, plucking, potlucks, puckered, puckerer, pullback, skullcap, stackups, stickups, tuckshop, unpacked, unpacker, unpicked, unpucker, upchucks, wickiups, wickyups. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Images: Digital Art | 9. Usage Frequency 10. Expressions 11. Expressions: Internet 12. Translations: Modern | 13. Derivations 14. Rhymes 15. Anagrams 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
