Definitions

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

  • noun A hard rubber disk used in ice hockey.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A fairy; elf; sprite.
  • noun Specifically [capitalized] A fairy of high repute. who was also known by the names of Robin Goodfellow and Friar Rush.
  • noun The devil; Satan.
  • noun A disk of rubber used in place of a ball in hockey.

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

  • noun A disk of vulcanized rubber used in the game of hockey, as the object to be driven through the goals.
  • noun (Mediæval Myth.) A celebrated fairy, “the merry wanderer of the night;” -- called also Robin Goodfellow, Friar Rush, Pug, etc.
  • noun (Zoöl.), Prov. Eng. The goatsucker.

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

  • noun A mischievous spirit.
  • noun ice hockey A hard hard rubber disc; any other flat disc meant to be hit across a flat surface in a game.
  • noun An object shaped like a puck.
  • noun computing A pointing device with a crosshair.

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

  • noun a mischievous sprite of English folklore
  • noun a vulcanized rubber disk 3 inches in diameter that is used instead of a ball in ice hockey

Etymologies

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

[Perhaps from dialectal puck, to strike.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English puke, from Old English pūca ("goblin, demon"), from Proto-Germanic *pūkô (“a goblin, spook”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pāug(')- (“brilliance, spectre”). Cognate with Old Norse pūki (dialectal Swedish puke, "devil"), Middle Low German spōk, spūk ("apparition, ghost"), German Spuk ("a haunting"). More at spook.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

1886, from verb puck ("to hit or strike something"). Compare poke (1861), Irish poc ("stroke in hurling, bag")

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Examples

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  • Sidekick of Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

    December 14, 2007

  • A town in Poland near Gdansk.

    January 1, 2008