Gavelock

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A spear or dart. obsolete, rare
  2. 2
    An iron crowbar. Scotland, obsolete

Etymology

From Middle English gavelock, from Old English gafeluc (“spear, javelin”), from gafol (“fork”) + -uc (diminutive suffix). Compare Old Norse gaflak, Icelandic gaflok, Old French gavelot, glavelot, French javelot, Irish gabhal (“fork”), Welsh gaflach (“fork, dart”). More at gaff, gaffle and javelin.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.