Ock and och

One of the marvellous things about our language is the rightness of our words. Quite often they look or sound like the thing they represent: splodge or splotch, for example, explains itself; French has the feeble grosse tache.

The sound ock (or, in Scotland, och) is unpleasant, so many of the words that end with it have connotations which are either distasteful or, at best, uninteresting. The OED has 2,075 words ending in ock or och; here are a few of the two-syllable ones:
cheslock, a woodlouse; burdock, a coarse, weedy plant; castock, the stem of a cabbage; buttock, a rounded fleshy protuberance of the rump; luddock, another buttock; fussock, a fat, unwieldy woman; hemlock, a poison; pibroch, the sound of the bagpipes, cadlock, wild rape; carlock, which is made from the bladder of a sturgeon; fitchock, a term of contempt; dunnock, a rather dull bird; kittock, a woman of loose character; daddock, rotten or decayed wood; mullock, rubbish; brattock, a tiny brat; lobcock, a blundering fool; ale-pock, an ulcer caused by drinking; gralloch, the offal of a deer or, as a verb, to disembowel……

Nothing among those to give much pleasure to anyone. And, of course, there’s not a lot of joy to be had from pillocks or bollocks, is there?

Perhaps after all this nastiness I should end on a jollier note by mentioning bummock, which according to the OED is “a large brewing of ale for a merry meeting”. Cheers!

[No suggestions for additions to the list or exceptions, please. It was a happy hour with the OED but I’m bored with this topic now.]