yoke

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

• noun A contoured crossbar having two U-shaped attachments that fit around the necks of a team of oxen or other draft animals, with a central ring for hitching the team to a cart, plow, or other load.
• noun A pair of draft animals, such as oxen, joined by a yoke.
• noun A bar used with a double harness to connect the collar of each horse to the pole of a wagon or coach.
• noun A frame designed to be carried across a person's shoulders with equal loads suspended from each end.
• noun Nautical A crossbar on a ship's rudder to which the steering cables are connected.
• noun A clamp or vise that holds a machine part in place or controls its movement or that holds two such parts together.
• noun A piece of a garment that is closely fitted, either around the neck and shoulders or at the hips, and from which an unfitted or gathered part of the garment is hung.
• noun Something that connects or joins together; a bond or tie.
• noun Electronics A series of two or more magnetic recording heads fastened securely together for playing or recording on more than one track simultaneously.
• noun Any of various emblems of subjugation, such as a structure made of two upright spears with a third laid across them, under which conquered enemies of ancient Rome were forced to march in subjection.
• noun The condition of being subjugated by or as if by a conqueror; subjugation or bondage.
• intransitive verb To fit or join with a yoke.
• intransitive verb To harness a draft animal to.
• intransitive verb To harness (a draft animal) to a vehicle or an implement.
• intransitive verb To join together; bind.
• intransitive verb To force into heavy labor, bondage, or subjugation.
• intransitive verb To become joined.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To put a yoke on.
• To join or couple by means of a yoke.
• To join; couple; link; unite.
• To restrain; confine; oppress; enslave.
• To put horses or other draft-animals to. Compare the colloquial phrase to harness a wagon.
• To be joined together; go along with.
• noun In carpentry, the cross-piece at the head of a wooden window-frame, which forms the head of a window as the sill forms the foot. Compare head-sill.
• noun A contrivance of great antiquity, by which a pair of draft-animals, particularly oxen, are fastened together, usually consisting of a piece of timber, hollowed or made curving near each end, and fitted with bows for receiving the necks of the animals.
• noun Hence, something resembling this apparatus in form or use.
• noun A frame of wood attached to the neck of an animal to prevent it from creeping under a fence or gate, or from jumping over a fence.
• noun A cross-bar or curved piece from which a large bell is suspended for ringing.
• noun Nautical, a bar attached to the rudder-head, and projecting in each direction sidewise. To the ends are attached the yoke-ropes or yoke-lines, which are pulled by the steersman in rowboats, or pass to the drum on the axis of the steering-wheel in larger craft.
• noun A kind of band or supporting piece to which are fastened the plaited, gathered, or otherwise falling and depending parts of a garment, and which by its shape causes these parts to hang in a certain way: as, the yoke of a shirt, which is a double piece of stuff carried around the neck and over the shoulders, and from which the whole body of the shirt hangs; the yoke of a skirt, which supports the fullness from the hips downward.
• noun A branch-pipe, or a two-way coupling for pipes, particularly twin hot- and cold-water pipes that unite in their discharge.
• noun In a grain-elevator, the head-frame or top of the elevator, where the elevator-belt or lifter passes over the upper drum, and where the cups discharge into the shoot.
• noun A carriage-clip for uniting two parts of the running-gear.
• noun A double journal-bearing having two journals united by bars or rods, that pass on each side of the pulley, the shafting being supported by both journals: used in some forms of dynamos to carry the armature; a yoke-arbor.
• noun A pair of iron clamps of semicircular shape, with a cross screw and nut at each end for tightening them around heavy pipes or other objects, for attaching the ropes when hoisting or lowering into position by power.
• noun In wheelwrighting, the overlap tire-bolt washer used at the joints of the fellies.
• noun (I) In an electromagnet consisting of two parallel cores joined across one pair of ends to form a U- or horseshoe-shaped magnet, the cross-bar joining the ends is called the yoke of the magnet.
• noun An emblem, token, or mark of servitude, slavery, and sometimes of suffering generally.
• noun Something which couples, connects, or binds together; a bond of connection; a link; a tie.
• noun A chain or ridge of hills; also, a single hill in a chain: obsolete, but still retained in some place-names: as, Troutbeck Yoke.
• noun A pair; couple; brace: said of things united by some link, especially of draft-animals: very rarely of persons, in contempt.
• noun As much land as may be plowed by a pair of oxen in a day; hence, as much work generally as is done at a stretch; also, a part of the working-day, as from meal-time to meal-time, in which labor is carried on without interruption. Compare yokelet.
• noun Synonyms Brace, etc. See pair.
• noun A dialectal variant of yox, yex. Also yolk.

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

• intransitive verb To be joined or associated; to be intimately connected; to consort closely; to mate.
• noun A bar or frame of wood by which two oxen are joined at the heads or necks for working together.
• noun A frame or piece resembling a yoke, as in use or shape.