different between oarlock vs warlock

English

Etymology

oar +? lock

Noun

oarlock (plural oarlocks)

1. A device attached to the gunwale of a rowboat to hold the oars in place while rowing.
   • 1906: Horatio Alger, Joe the Hotel Boy [1]

     But, as luck would have it, scarcely had he started to row his boat again when an oarlock broke, and so it took him the best part of an hour to make the trip.

Synonyms

• (UK) rowlock

Translations

English

Alternative forms

• warluck (uncommon, chiefly dialectal, largely obsolete)
• warlow (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English warloghe, warlowe, warlo?e, from Old English w?rloga (“traitor, deceiver”, literally “truce-breaker”), from w?r (“covenant, truce, pact, promise”) (from Proto-Indo-European *weh?- (“true”); whence also Latin v?rus) + loga (“liar”), from Proto-Germanic *lugô, related to Old English l?ogan (whence English lie). The hard -ck ending originated in Scottish and Northern English, like the sense "male magic-user" (from the notion that such men were in league with the Devil and had thus broken their baptismal vows / betrayed Christianity). Cognate with Old High German w?rlogo (“truce-breaker, traitor”).

A few writers alternatively propose derivation from Old Norse varðlokkur (“caller of spirits”), but as the OED notes, this is implausible due to the extreme rarity of the Norse word and because forms without hard -k, which are consistent with the Old English etymology (“traitor”), are attested earlier than forms with -k, and forms with -ð- are not attested.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?w??.l?k/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?w??.l?k/

Noun

warlock (plural warlocks)

1. A male magic-user; a male witch.

Usage notes

• Because of its etymology, the term is not used by some male witches, who prefer other terms like witch instead.

Translations

References

Anagrams

• lacwork

Scots

Alternative forms

• warlick, warlo, warluck, waurlock

Etymology

From Middle English warloghe, warlowe, warlo?e, from Old English w?rloga (“traitor, deceiver”, literally “truce-breaker”), from w?r (“covenant, truce, pact, promise”) (from Proto-Indo-European *w?r- (“true”); compare veritable) + loga (“liar”), from Proto-Germanic *lugô, related to Old English l?ogan (whence English lie).

Noun

warlock (plural warlocks)

1. the Devil
   1. a devil; a fiend
2. warlock; a man who is thought to be in league with the powers of darkness and to have supernatural knowledge and means of bewitching and harming others
   1. (occasionally) witch
   2. (in a weaker sense) sorcerer, wizard, magician
3. (attributive, in combination) bewitched, magical, supernatural; malevolent, mischievous
4. (derogatory) an old, ugly or misanthropic man; a mischievous or troublesome fellow

Synonyms

• (male magic user): juglour, sorcerar, varlet, weird
• (female magic user): ell-woman, galdragon, gyre carline, hexie, sorceres, wancanny carlin, weird-woman, wise woman, wise wife, witch, witch-carline, witch-queen, witch-wife

Derived terms

Further reading

• “warlock” in the Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries.