Frock
name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A dress, a piece of clothing, which consists of a skirt and a cover for the upper body.
- 2 A frog. dialectal
- 3 a one-piece garment for a woman; has skirt and bodice wordnet
- 4 An outer garment worn by priests and other clericals; a habit.
- 5 a habit worn by clerics wordnet
Show 3 more definitions
- 6 A sailor's jersey.
- 7 a long, loose outer garment wordnet
- 8 An undress regimental coat.
- 1 To clothe (somebody) in a frock. transitive
"[…] Mrs. Parmly-Coles, in thus frocking her daughter, was no jealous cat but a pearl among mothers."
- 2 put a frock on wordnet
- 3 To make (somebody) a cleric. transitive
- 4 To grant to an officer the title and uniform of a rank he will soon be promoted to. US, transitive
"MajGen Richard G. Schulze […] was selected for two-star rank by members of the January selection board. He was frocked on 27 Jan and assigned new duties as CG, MCRD, San Diego."
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"Her face was turned away as we entered, but we could see that she was dressed in a red frock, and that she had long white gloves on."
Etymology
From Middle English frok, frokke, from Old French froc (“frock, a monk's gown or habit”), perhaps via Medieval Latin hrocus, roccus, rocus (“a coat”), from Frankish *hrokk (“skirt, dress, robe”), from Proto-Germanic *hrukkaz (“robe, jacket, skirt, tunic”), from Proto-Indo-European *kreḱ- (“to weave”). Cognate with Old High German hroch, roch (“skirt, dress, cowl”) – whence German Rock (“skirt, coat”) –, Saterland Frisian Rok (“skirt”), Dutch rok (“skirt, petticoat”), Old English rocc (“an overgarment, tunic, rochet”), Old Norse rokkr (“skirt, jacket”), whence Danish rok (“garment”).
From Middle English frock, froke, from Old Norse frauki (“frog”), related to Old English frocga (“frog”). More at frog.
Related phrases
More for "frock"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.