Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To peddle goods aggressively, especially by calling out.
  • intransitive verb To peddle (goods) aggressively, especially by calling out.
  • noun Any of various birds of prey, especially of the genera Accipiter and Buteo in the family Accipitridae, characteristically having a short hooked bill and strong claws used for seizing.
  • noun Any of various similar birds of prey.
  • noun A person who preys on others; a shark.
  • noun One who demonstrates an actively aggressive or combative attitude, as in an argument.
  • noun A person who favors military force or action in order to carry out foreign policy.
  • intransitive verb To hunt with trained hawks.
  • intransitive verb To swoop and strike in the manner of a hawk.
  • intransitive verb To clear or attempt to clear the throat by or as if by coughing up phlegm.
  • intransitive verb To clear the throat of (phlegm).
  • noun An audible effort to clear the throat by expelling phlegm.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To hunt birds or small animals by means of hawks or falcons trained for the purpose; practise hawking; engage in falconry.
  • To fly in the manner of the hawk; soar; take prey in the air.
  • noun An effort to raise phlegm from the throat.
  • To make an effort to raise phlegm from the throat.
  • To raise by hawking: as, to hawk up phlegm.
  • noun A diurnal bird of prey which does not habitually feed upon carrion: contrasted with owl and with vulture.
  • noun With a specifying term, some bird that hawks for its prey on the wing.
  • noun Synonyms Hawk, Falcon. Hawk is the most general and indefinite name of a bird of prey. It seems to have at first distinguished the birds so designated from carrion-feeding kinds and from those that prey by night (vultures and owls), and then to have been applied to those which could be trained—that is, used in the sport of hawking or falconry. Its nearest synonym is falcon; and since all hawks were formerly placed in one genus, Falco, hawk and falcon became interchangeable book-names for most members of the family Falconidæ. But, again, the hawks used in falconry were of two series, respectively designated noble and ignoble, corresponding to two technical subfamilies of Falconidæ. The name falcon became, therefore, technically restricted to the former of these series, the subfamily Falconinæ, while hawk was coincidently applied to the other, Accipitrinæ, alone.
  • To draw or to pull with a hawk, as cloth through the dye-vat of a hawking-machine.
  • noun In building, a small quadrangular board with a handle underneath, used by plasterers to hold the mortar.
  • noun A double-hooked instrument for drawing or moving about the cloth in the dyeing-liquor of a hawking-machine.
  • To offer for sale by outcry in a street or other public place, or from door to door; convey through town or country for sale: as, to hawk brooms or ballads.

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

  • intransitive verb To catch, or attempt to catch, birds by means of hawks trained for the purpose, and let loose on the prey; to practice falconry.
  • intransitive verb To make an attack while on the wing; to soar and strike like a hawk; -- generally with at.
  • noun (Zoöl.) One of numerous species and genera of rapacious birds of the family Falconidæ. They differ from the true falcons in lacking the prominent tooth and notch of the bill, and in having shorter and less pointed wings. Many are of large size and grade into the eagles. Some, as the goshawk, were formerly trained like falcons. In a more general sense the word is not infrequently applied, also, to true falcons, as the sparrow hawk, pigeon hawk, duck hawk, and prairie hawk.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the honey buzzard.
  • noun See under Eagle.
  • noun (Zoöl.) an Asiatic bird of the genus Spizætus, or Limnætus, intermediate between the hawks and eagles. There are several species.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a voracious fly of the family Asilidæ. See Hornet fly, under Hornet.
  • noun (Zoöl.) See Hawk moth, in the Vocabulary.
  • noun (Zoöl.) An owl of India (Ninox scutellatus).
  • noun (Horology) the pawl for the rack, in the striking mechanism of a clock.
  • transitive verb To offer for sale by outcry in the street; to carry (merchandise) about from place to place for sale; to peddle.
  • transitive verb To raise by hawking, as phlegm.
  • noun An effort to force up phlegm from the throat, accompanied with noise.
  • noun (Masonry) A small board, with a handle on the under side, to hold mortar.
  • noun an attendant on a plasterer to supply him with mortar.
  • intransitive verb To clear the throat with an audible sound by forcing an expiratory current of air through the narrow passage between the depressed soft palate and the root of the tongue, thus aiding in the removal of foreign substances.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To sell.
  • noun A diurnal predatory bird of the family Accipitridae.
  • noun politics An advocate of aggressive political positions.
  • verb transitive To hunt with a hawk.
  • noun A plasterer's tool, made of a flat surface with a handle below, used to hold an amount of plaster prior to application to the wall or ceiling being worked on: a mortarboard.
  • noun An effort to force up phlegm from the throat, accompanied with noise.
  • verb transitive To forcibly attempt to cough up (phlegm).
  • verb intransitive To clear the throat loudly.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb sell or offer for sale from place to place

Etymologies

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

[Middle English hauken, back-formation from hauker; see hawker.]

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

[Middle English hauk, from Old English hafoc; see kap- in Indo-European roots.]

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

[Imitative.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Back-formation from hawker.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English hauk, from Old English hafoc, from Proto-Germanic *habukaz (compare West Frisian hauk, Dutch havik, German Habicht), from Proto-Indo-European *kobuĝo (compare Latin capys, capus 'bird of prey', Albanian gabonjë, shkabë 'eagle', Russian кобец (kóbec) 'falcon').

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Onomatopoeia.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word hawk.

Examples

  • _wild_ hawk, a _hawk unreclaimed_, or _irreclaimable_.

    Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies Samuel Johnson 1746

  • Hawk catches a live animal The term hawk can be used in several ways: In strict usage in

    WN.com - Business News 2010

  • Hawk catches a live animal The term hawk can be used in several ways: In strict usage in Europe and Asia, to mean any of the species in the subfamily

    WN.com - Business News 2010

  • The La Gana hawk is a good weapon but seems otherwise useless.

    A Little Touch Of Home 2008

  • To the Fried Hiatts who care about this stuff being a "deficit hawk" is about inflicting pain on Democratic constituencies, not reducing the deficit.

    Lance Mannion: 2010

  • SwtPrince_dk @RosGuild I am but mad N by NW when the wind is S'ly I know a hawk from a handsaw

    Lance Mannion: 2009

  • To the Fried Hiatts who care about this stuff being a "deficit hawk" is about inflicting pain on Democratic constituencies, not reducing the deficit.

    Crumbs 2010

  • They are angry that there kids will be left in hawk up to their eye balls by the government.

    Tea Party movement threatened by internal rifts 2009

  • SwtPrince_dk @RosGuild I am but mad N by NW when the wind is S'ly I know a hawk from a handsaw

    The tragedy will not be twittered 2009

  • An animal control officer picked up an injured hawk from a person's yard and took the hawk to a wildlife rehabilitator.

    Prince George's County Animal Watch Post 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • The name of the Curtiss P-1, an open-cockpit biplane of the early '20s. More on Wikipedia.

    December 30, 2008

  • "Hawk is the most general and indefinite name of a bird of prey. It seems to have at first distinguished the birds so designated from carrion-feeding kinds and from those that prey by night (vultures and owls), and then to have been applied to those which could be trained—that is, used in the sport of hawking or falconry. Its nearest synonym is falcon; and since all hawks were formerly placed in one genus, Falco, hawk and falcon became interchangeable book-names for most members of the family Falconidæ. But, again, the hawks used in falconry were of two series, respectively designated noble and ignoble, corresponding to two technical subfamilies of Falconidæ. The name falcon became, therefore, technically restricted to the former of these series, the subfamily Falconinæ, while hawk was coincidently applied to the other, Accipitrinæ, alone."

    --Century Dictionary

    March 3, 2011

  • See comments on hock.

    May 16, 2012