Mattock
name, noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An agricultural tool whose blades are at right angles to the body, similar to a pickaxe.
"Workmen, breaking up an old floor, have come to him, mattocks in their hands, dismayed: ‘Mr Richard, see what we have turned up ...’"
- 2 a kind of pick that is used for digging; has a flat blade set at right angles to the handle wordnet
- 1 To cut or dig with a mattock.
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"Workmen, breaking up an old floor, have come to him, mattocks in their hands, dismayed: ‘Mr Richard, see what we have turned up ...’"
Etymology
From Middle English mattok (“mattock, pickaxe”), from Old English mattuc, meottoc, mettoc (“mattock, fork, trident”), from Proto-West Germanic *mattjuk (“mattock, ploughshare”), from Proto-Indo-European *met- (“to cut, reap”). Related to Old High German medela (“plough”), Middle High German metze, metz (“knife”), Latin mateola (“implement for digging in the soil”), Polish motyka (“hoe, mattock”), Russian моты́га (motýga, “hoe, mattock”), Lithuanian matikkas (“mattock”), Sanskrit मत्य (matyà, “harrow, roller, club”). More at mason.
Related phrases
More for "mattock"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.