Definitions

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

  • noun The lightweight elastic outer bark of the cork oak, used especially for bottle closures, insulation, floats, and crafts.
  • noun Something made of cork, especially a bottle stopper.
  • noun A bottle stopper made of other material, such as plastic.
  • noun A small float used on a fishing line or net to buoy up the line or net or to indicate when a fish bites.
  • noun Botany A nonliving, water-resistant protective tissue that is formed on the outside of the cork cambium in the woody stems and roots of many seed plants.
  • transitive verb To stop or seal with or as if with a cork.
  • transitive verb To restrain or check; hold back.
  • transitive verb To blacken with burnt cork.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A corruption of calk.
  • noun The name given in the Highlands of Scotland to the lichen Lecanora tartarea, yielding a crimson or purple dye. See cudbear.
  • In currying, to grain.
  • noun plural A game played with corks colored differently on the sides and so trimmed that they may fall either way, the players betting on whether the majority thrown will fall red or black. Sometimes called props.
  • noun In France and Belgium, a game, a mixture of quoits and bowls.
  • noun A variety of skittle-pool.
  • noun A bristle; in the plural, bristles; beard.
  • noun A species of oak, Quercus Suber, growing in the south of Europe (especially in Spain and Portugal) and in the north of Africa, having a thick, rough bark, for the sake of which it is often planted. It grows to the height of from 20 to 40 feet, and yields bark every 6 to 10 years for 150 years.
  • noun ‐2. The outer bark of this oak, which is very light and elastic, and is used for many purposes, especially for stoppers for bottles and casks, for artificial legs, for inner soles of shoes, for floats of nets, etc.
  • noun In botany, a constituent of the bark of most phænogamous plants, especially of dicotyledons.
  • noun Something made of cork.
  • noun A stopper or bung for a bottle, cask, or other vessel, cut out of cork; also, by extension, a stopper made of some other substance: as, a rubber cork. A small float of cork used by anglers to buoy up their fishing-lines or to indicate when a fish bites or nibbles; by extension, any such float, even when not made of cork.
  • Made of or with cork; consisting wholly or chiefly of cork.
  • To stop or bung with a piece of cork, as a bottle or cask; confine or make fast with a cork.
  • To stop or check as if with a cork, as a person speaking; silence suddenly or effectually: generally with up: as, this poser corked him up; cork (yourself) up.
  • To blacken with burnt cork, as the face, to represent a negro.

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

  • noun The outer layer of the bark of the cork tree (Quercus Suber), of which stoppers for bottles and casks are made. See cutose.
  • noun A stopper for a bottle or cask, cut out of cork.
  • noun A mass of tabular cells formed in any kind of bark, in greater or less abundance.
  • noun a jacket having thin pieces of cork inclosed within canvas, and used to aid in swimming.
  • noun (Bot.) the species of oak (Quercus Suber of Southern Europe) whose bark furnishes the cork of commerce.
  • transitive verb To stop with a cork, as a bottle.
  • transitive verb To furnish or fit with cork; to raise on cork.

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

  • noun uncountable The bark of the cork oak, which is very light and porous and used for making bottle stoppers, flotation devices, and insulation material.
  • noun A bottle stopper made from this or any other material.
  • noun An angling float, also traditionally made of oak cork.
  • noun The cork oak.
  • noun botany The tissue that grows from the cork cambium.
  • verb transitive To seal or stop up, especially with a cork stopper.
  • verb transitive To blacken (as) with a burnt cork
  • verb To leave the cork in a bottle after attempting to uncork it.
  • verb slang To be quiet.
  • verb To fill with cork, as the center of a baseball bat.
  • verb transitive, Australia To injure through a blow; to induce a haematoma.

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

  • verb stuff with cork
  • noun (botany) outer tissue of bark; a protective layer of dead cells
  • noun a small float usually made of cork; attached to a fishing line
  • noun outer bark of the cork oak; used for stoppers for bottles etc.
  • verb close a bottle with a cork
  • noun the plug in the mouth of a bottle (especially a wine bottle)
  • noun a port city in southern Ireland

Etymologies

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

[Middle English corke, cork, cork-soled shoe, probably ultimately from Arabic dialectal qurq, perhaps (via Berber) from Latin cortex, cortic-, bark; see cortex.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English cork ("oak bark", "cork"), from Middle Dutch curc ("cork (material or object)") or Middle Low German korck ("cork (material or object)") or Early Modern German Kork ("cork (material or object)"), 1) from Spanish corcho ("cork (material or object)") (also corcha or corche), (via Mozarabic) from Latin cortex ("bark"), or 2) from (Old) Spanish alcorque ("cork sole"), from Andalusian Arabic القورق (al-qūrq), from Latin quercus ("oak") or Latin cortex ("bark") or from Aramaic

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Examples

  • Pulling a cork is a nasty, dirty chore that sometimes has to be done before the joy can ensue.

    LENNDEVOURS Mentioned in Newsday 2007

  • If cork is deemed to be a flawed closure then move to something better.

    Vent your spleen: synthetic corks! | Dr Vino's wine blog 2009

  • Double cork is snowboarding's must-have trick in Vancouver

    Doubling up on double corks 2010

  • As has been suggested above, using a pulltaps or like designed corkscrew … insert directly into the top center of the wax capsule, when completely inserted, slowly (after all this is wine to be enjoyed rather than slugged one would hope) pull the cork from the bottle.

    Vent your spleen: wax seals on wine bottles | Dr Vino's wine blog 2009

  • Moe had a great time stealing then chewing up the cork from the champagne.

    Proof through the night Matthew Guerrieri 2008

  • I too enjoy Morecambe, like suddenly being shot into the sea like a cork from the crowded bottleneck of Lancaster.

    Chez Moi Peter Ashley 2008

  • And, because cork is a democratic troublemaker, this can happen to the world's best wines as well as more humble ones.

    Love at First Twist 2007

  • It goes without saying that anyone with the name of Piers Morgan shouldn't be doing anything physical above popping a cork from a champagne bottle.

    Archive 2007-09-01 2007

  • And, because cork is a democratic troublemaker, this can happen to the world's best wines as well as more humble ones.

    LENNDEVOURS: 2007

  • April makes no difference to the Lavalle cork tree imported from central Japan; to the Sakhalin cork, its diamond bark rising into branches from a trunk of plated sand.

    Rue Family 2006

Comments

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  • "Corks were now appearing for stopping bottles; the British were the first to use them for wine, allowing it to age properly."

    --Kate Colquhoun, Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007), 220

    This is the late 18th century, BTW.

    January 18, 2017