Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
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noun
An area of miry or swampy ground; a place (in a road, field, etc) where a spring rises, or where rain pools, and keeps the ground miry.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: England, Southwestern, obsolete, possibly
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
A puck (mischievous or hostile spirit) or pixie.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
Unclear. The English Dialect Dictionary and Dictionary of the Scots Language mention a northeastern Scottish (Banff) dialectal word pouk "hole in the ground, usually waterlogged or marshy" which could be related (compare also pughole); the DSL considers that pouk to be the same word as the verb pouk (“to poke, to thrust”), and notes that in Banff pouk also means "dig or excavate in a careless, clumsy way, damage by excavation or holing". Alternatively, compare pock (“pit”). (In the 1800s, Halliwell-Phillipps speculated that the mires might be named in reference to the folk belief that pucksies/pucks (“mischievous or hostile spirits”) led travelers astray, potentially into bogs.
From puck.
