Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To pat or squeeze fondly or playfully, especially under the chin.
  • transitive verb To throw or toss.
  • transitive verb Informal To throw out; discard.
  • transitive verb Informal To force out; eject.
  • transitive verb Informal To give up; quit.
  • noun An affectionate pat or squeeze under the chin.
  • noun A throw, toss, or pitch.
  • intransitive verb To make a clucking sound.
  • noun A clucking sound.
  • noun A cut of beef extending from the neck to the ribs and including the shoulder blade.
  • noun A clamp that holds a tool or the material being worked in a machine such as a lathe.
  • noun A clamping device for holding a drill bit.
  • noun Informal Food.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A local British name of the chack. See chack.
  • In lawn-bowls, to strike (a counting ball) out of range, or to strike (a ball of one's own side) into a counting position.
  • An utterance, generally repeated, used by a person to call chickens, pigs, or other animals, as when they are to be fed.
  • With full force; so as to hit; closely.
  • noun A gentle or playful blow or tap, as under the chin.
  • noun A toss, as with the fingers: a short throw.
  • To make a low guttural sound, as hens and cocks and some other birds in calling their mates or young; cluck.
  • To laugh with quiet satisfaction; chuckle.
  • To call with chucking or clucking, as a hen her chicks.
  • noun A hen.
  • noun A term of endearment.
  • To fix in a lathe by means of a chuck.
  • noun In cricket, a ball thrown instead of bowled.
  • noun The part of a beef-animal that lies between the neck and the shoulder-blade: used as a roast.
  • To pat playfully; give a gentle or familiar blow to.
  • To throw or impel, with a quick motion, a short distance; pitch: as, chuck the beggar a copper; he was chucked into the street.
  • noun A low guttural sound, like the call of a hen to her young.
  • noun A woodchuck.
  • noun A dialectal form of cheek.
  • noun A block; “a great chip,”
  • noun A sea-shell.
  • noun A pebble or small stone.
  • noun plural In Scotland, a common game among children, in which five pebbles (or sometimes small shells) are thrown up and caught on the back of the hand, or one is thrown up, and before it is caught as it falls the others are picked up, or placed in ones, twos, threes, or fours. Sometimes called chuckies. See jackstone.
  • noun In turnery, a block or other appendage to a lathe to fix the work for the purpose of turning it into any desired form.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The chuck or call of a hen.
  • noun A sudden, small noise.
  • noun A word of endearment; -- corrupted from chick.
  • intransitive verb To make a noise resembling that of a hen when she calls her chickens; to cluck.
  • intransitive verb rare To chuckle; to laugh.
  • noun colloq. A piece of the backbone of an animal, from between the neck and the collar bone, with the adjoining parts, cut for cooking.
  • transitive verb To call, as a hen her chickens.
  • noun A slight blow or pat under the chin.
  • noun A short throw; a toss.
  • noun (Mach.) A contrivance or machine fixed to the mandrel of a lathe, for holding a tool or the material to be operated upon.
  • noun a play in which a farthing is pitched into a hole; pitch farthing.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Variant of chock, possibly from French choc, knock, blow; see shock.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English chukken, of imitative origin.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Dialectal chuck, lump, perhaps variant of chock.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Variant of chock.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Onomatopoeic dialect term for chicken, imitative of a hen's cluck.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From woodchuck.

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Examples

Comments

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  • 10^27. See chucknorris.

    June 6, 2008

  • Also useful in phrases such as:

    chuck a sickie

    chuck a u-ey

    November 3, 2008

  • chuck is also used for a body of water, such as a salt chuck, skookumchuck

    http://goo.gl/AJEyW A Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon: Or, the Trade Language of Oregon

    George Gibbs 1863

    February 4, 2013