yoke
Pluralyokes
Pluralyokes
- 1A bar or frame that joins two oxen or other draft animals at the neck so they can pull a cart or plow; also, a similar device for a single draft animal.
The oxen leaned into the yoke, and the cart lurched forward.
An old carpenter in the valley still shapes yokes by hand for the few farmers who plow with oxen.
UsageOften pronounced like yolk, the yellow part of an egg; do not mix up the spellings.
Note
Poets give it telling adjectives: the taming yoke in Dryden's Virgil, the galling yoke in Pope's Odyssey.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Dryden's translation of Virgil's Georgics contains the phrase taming yoke, originally spelled taming Yoak. en.wikisource.org
- Pope's translation of Homer's Odyssey contains galling yoke in Book III. gutenberg.org
- 2Something that oppresses or holds a person down; a burden.
The colony lived under the yoke of foreign rule for two centuries.
After the divorce he felt free at last of the yoke of other people's expectations.
UsageUsually under the yoke of something; people throw off or break the yoke.
Similarburden, oppression, bondage, tyranny
Note
Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus has "bond-men to the yoke of Rome", and in Camden's Britain enemies take up arms rather than be brought under the yoke of a woman's government.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus contains the quoted phrase, spoken by young Lucius in Act IV, scene i; hyphenation varies by edition. en.wikisource.org
- Camden's Britain, in Philemon Holland's translation, describes enemies invading to avoid subjection to a woman's government. en.wiktionary.org
- 3The fitted part of a garment around the shoulders or hips from which the rest hangs, often made of a double layer of fabric or decorated.
The western shirt had a pointed yoke across the back, trimmed with white piping.
Skirts with a deep hip yoke sit smoothly over the waist and flare out below it.
Note
Dressmakers gather or pleat the body of a garment into it, which is why the city child in Willa Cather's O Pioneers! (1913) wears a red frock "gathered full from the yoke". On a shirt it is the panel across the upper back and shoulders; on a skirt or jeans it is the shaped band below the waistband, doing the same work at the hips.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 7 facts
- A garment's body may be gathered or pleated into its shoulder yoke. en.wikipedia.org
- Willa Cather wrote O Pioneers!. gutenberg.org
- O Pioneers! was first published in 1913. digitalcollections.drew.edu
- The narrator describes a city child wearing a red frock with the exact words 'gathered full from the yoke'. gutenberg.org
- A shirt's yoke forms the panel at the upper back and shoulders. levi.com.ph
- A skirt's fitted hip yoke supports the material below it. en.wikipedia.org
- A jeans yoke is the shaped section below the waistband that provides shaping. ariat.com
- 4To join or link people or things closely, often in a way they did not choose; also, to be joined in this way.
The treaty yoked two old enemies in an uneasy alliance.
Fairly or not, history will always yoke his name to the failed bank.
UsageWith to or with, often together: yoke his name to the bank.
Similarjoin, link, bind, couple, tie
Oppositeseparate, divide, sever
Note
It takes with or to and often carries a grievance: in The Winter's Tale a man swears that, were he guilty, his name might be "yoak'd with his, that did betray the Best", and a sufferer in Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound asks why the son of Kronos yokes them "ever to pain". Scott's Rob Roy is lighter: Fife's boroughs yoked end to end like ropes of onions.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- In The Winter's Tale, Polixenes invokes this curse on his name in response to the accusation that he has touched Leontes' queen 'Forbiddenly'; the quotation is accurate. internetshakespeare.uvic.ca
- In Anna Swanwick's translation of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, the sufferer Io addresses the son of Kronos with the quoted phrase. en.wikisource.org
- In Walter Scott's Rob Roy, Andrew compares Fife's boroughs joined end to end to ropes of ingans. gutenberg.org
- 'Ingans' in Scott's comparison means onions; the item paraphrases rather than directly quotes his wording. en.wiktionary.org
- 5Any of various crosspieces or bars that link or support parts like an ox yoke, such as the frame a bell hangs from or a rudder's steering bar.
The mechanic replaced the cracked yoke that connects the drive shaft to the rear axle.
In the old engine, each pair of valve rods was coupled by forged yokes.
- 6The control column with a crosspiece used to steer an aircraft, or a game controller made to copy it.
During the approach the captain kept one hand on the yoke and the other on the throttle.
The student pilot eased the yoke forward to level off at three thousand feet.
UsagePilots pull back on, push or ease the yoke.
Note
In the cockpit the yoke does two jobs with one grip: pushed or pulled, it lowers or raises the nose; turned like a wheel, it banks the aircraft. Pilots also call it the control wheel. Many aircraft use a control stick instead, a single upright handle that does the same work.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- Pushing or pulling the yoke controls pitch; rotating it controls bank. faa.gov
- Another name for the yoke is control wheel. en.wiktionary.org
- Aircraft also use a single control stick to perform the same pitch and roll functions. nasa.gov
- 7A pair of draft animals, especially oxen, working together; formerly, any pair of things that go together.
The family traded a rifle and two blankets for a good yoke of oxen.
One yoke of cattle became so foot sore that they were unserviceable, and we were obliged to drive them behind the wagon.
1861, E. J. Guerin, Mountain CharleyUsageAfter a number it often stays singular: four yoke of oxen.
Note
William Tyndale's New Testament of 1526 already has a guest beg to be excused because he has bought "fyve yooke of oxen", and the usage rolled on into the wagon trains of the nineteenth century.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- William Tyndale's complete New Testament was first published in 1526. worms.de
- Luke 14:19 in that edition contains the quoted purchase and request for excuse; oxen expands the printed abbreviation oxẽ. en.wiktionary.org
- The unchanged plural yoke appears in accounts of nineteenth-century wagon migration. en.wikisource.org
- 8To join draft animals together with a yoke, or to put a yoke on them to pull a cart or plow; also, to harness a cart or plow to an animal.
The settlers yoked their oxen at dawn and had the wagons rolling within the hour.
Farmers in the hill villages still yoke their bullocks to wooden plows.
UsageYou yoke the animals, or yoke them to a plow or wagon.
Note
The verb takes either end of the harness as its object: you yoke the oxen, or, in Dryden's Virgil, the car itself. With to it names what the animals pull, as when Oliver Goldsmith notes that lions have been yoked to the chariots of conquerors.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- Yoke can take the animals as its direct object. en.wiktionary.org
- Dryden's translation of Virgil uses yoke with the car as its direct object. gutenberg.org
- Oliver Goldsmith wrote that lions have been yoked to conquerors' chariots. en.wiktionary.org
- 9A bond of love, especially marriage, or of friendship or partnership; also, a duty or task shared by two or more people.
After thirty years under the same yoke, the couple could finish each other's sentences.
The two parties accepted the joint yoke of government with little enthusiasm.
Similarbond
Note
The image cuts both ways. In The Merchant of Venice companions whose souls "bear an equal yoke of love" are a well-matched pair pulling together; but Dryden's Dido stands resolved against "the Yoke of hapless Marriage", and Tennyson's Ida can only wish the yoke "gentle as freedom". The adjective usually tells you which is meant.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- In The Merchant of Venice, the quoted phrase describes companions as closely matched. Portia speaks the lines. folger.edu
- Dido declares herself resolved against the yoke of hapless marriage in Dryden's translation of Virgil's Aeneid. gutenberg.org
- Princess Ida speaks this wish to Psyche's child in Part VI of Tennyson's The Princess. gutenberg.org
Less common meanings
- 10To bring or keep people in bondage or submission, whether as slaves or as wage slaves; to restrain or oppress them.
The conquerors yoked the native people and forced them to labor in the silver mines.
Payday loans can yoke workers to jobs they hate for years.
UsageUse yoke someone to something: yoke workers to their jobs.
Similarshackle, oppress, subjugate, enslave, chain
Note
Oppression here stays at the neck: in Henry VI, Part 1 an army is the strength with which its commander "yoaketh your rebellious Neckes". With under it names what is imposed, as when William Camden says the Normans would have yoked the English under their tongue as they did under their command, teaching nothing but French in schools.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- In Henry VI, Part 1, Talbot describes his soldiers as his strength and says that he "yoaketh your rebellious Neckes" with them. internetshakespeare.uvic.ca
- William Camden says that the Normans sought to subject the English to their language, as to their rule, by compelling French-only instruction in schools. en.wiktionary.org
- 11A pole worn across the neck and shoulders to carry a pair of buckets or other loads, one hanging from each end.
The milkmaid balanced two pails on a yoke and crossed the frozen yard with care.
In the market, vendors carried fruit in baskets hung from bamboo yokes.
Note
The ox's bar moved to human shoulders: here a person carries the load rather than an animal pulling it. It turns up in rural English writing, where John Clare has a woman set down her buckets and jingle her yokes, and Hardy has a man who has carried pails on a yoke straighten his aching back. Milkmaid's yoke and shoulder pole name the same thing.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- The human carrying yoke rests on the neck and shoulders and supports loads, whereas an animal yoke enables draught animals to pull. en.wiktionary.org
- John Clare describes a woman setting down her buckets and jingling her yokes in "The Disappointment." en.wiktionary.org
- Thomas Hardy describes a milkman putting down pails carried on a yoke and painfully straightening his back in The Hand of Ethelberta. gutenberg.org
- "Milkmaid's yoke" and "shoulder pole" are alternative names for a carrying pole. en.wikipedia.org
- 12In ancient Rome, a raised yoke or an arch of three spears under which a defeated army was made to march in submission; chiefly in pass under the yoke.
The consul spared the prisoners' lives but made every one of them pass under the yoke before sending them home.
Passing under the yoke was a humiliation the defeated army never forgot.
Note
Livy describes the ritual: two spears fixed upright with a third across their tops, and the defeated army filing beneath. In Oliver Goldsmith's retelling the dictator spares the Aequi but makes them pass under the yoke "in token of servitude", which is the whole point of the gesture.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Livy describes a yoke made from two upright spears and a third across their tops, beneath which the defeated army passed. gutenberg.org
- Oliver Goldsmith's retelling says the dictator spared the Aequi and required them to pass under the yoke; "in token of servitude" is his narrator's wording. gutenberg.org
- Passing under the yoke signified defeat and submission. gutenberg.org
- 13A collar fastened around the neck of a prisoner or conquered person to restrict movement.
The museum displays a yoke once fastened on prisoners taken in war.
Chained by their yokes, the captives were marched for days to the coast.
Similarcollar
Note
A captive in a yoke was handled like a draft animal, led and held by the neck, so the collar announced conquest as well as preventing escape. The same picture of subjection runs through the yoke of a foreign power.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 2 facts
- Captives were restrained and marched using neck yokes, which impeded escape; the comparison with a draft animal is an explanatory analogy. understandingslavery.com
- The figurative yoke of a foreign power conveys subjection. byustudies.byu.edu
- 14A frame fitted around the neck of an animal such as a cow, pig, or goose to stop it from getting through a fence or other barrier.
The farmer fitted the wandering cow with a wooden yoke so she could no longer squeeze through the hedge.
Geese wearing small yokes could graze along the lane without slipping into the garden.
Note
It worked together with the fence: its projecting arms caught on the rails, so an enclosure could be built light and cheap. Pehr Kalm, traveling in North America, saw hogs in triangular wooden yokes for exactly that reason, and Thomas Tusser lists a strong yoke for a hog among a farm's gear, with a twitcher and rings.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- Projecting parts of an animal yoke caught on fencing to prevent passage. patents.google.com
- Yokes allowed enclosures to use lighter construction and less wood. archive.org
- Kalm observed hogs wearing triangular wooden yokes during his North American travels to prevent them passing through enclosures. archive.org
- Thomas Tusser included a strong hog yoke, a twitcher, and rings in his list of farm equipment. gutenberg.org
- 15A miscellaneous object or gadget; a thing of any sort.
Would you hand me that yoke for opening the tins?
He has the kitchen full of yokes he bought off the telly and never uses.
Similarthing, gadget, thingy, contraption
Note
Irish English uses it as the all-purpose word for a thing whose name does not matter or will not come: a gadget, a tool, the yoke for opening tins, even a gun. The playful yokibus does the same job. Like thingy or whatsit it is friendly and informal, and the same word covers a person and a pill too.
- 16
- 17A carriage or a horse and cart; by extension, a car or any other vehicle.
We'll take the yoke into town if the rain keeps up.
The old farmer still drove his yoke to the fair, with the mare between the shafts.
Similarcar
Note
The word followed the traffic, from yoked animals to the carts and carriages they pulled and, by extension, to cars. In James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), a man who has missed his train cannot find "any kind of a yoke" to give him a lift.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- James Joyce wrote A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, first published in book form in 1916. en.wikisource.org
- A male character who missed his train says he could not get "any kind of a yoke" to give him a lift; the speaker is Davin. gutenberg.org
- 18A pill containing a psychoactive drug.
He swore he'd never touch another yoke after the night he ended up in hospital.
Gardaí found a bag of yokes in the boot of the car.
Note
The pill borrows the vagueness of yoke for any unnamed thing: in Irish slang it is just a yoke, the drug left unnamed.
Checked 3 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The drug-pill sense developed from the general Irish sense of an object or contrivance. vulms.vu.edu.pk
- The underlying sense refers to something whose name is unspecified. en.wiktionary.org
- 19To put one's arms, or something such as a garland, around someone's neck or waist.
She yoked her arm around her sister's waist as they walked home.
Fans yoke their arms around each other's shoulders to sing the anthem.
Note
The gesture has a long history in the word: Middle English yoken could already mean to lock arms in wrestling.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Middle English yoken could mean to lock arms in wrestling. en.wiktionary.org
- 20A well-developed set of muscles across the neck and shoulders.
- 21A part of a magnetic circuit that carries no windings, such as the metal piece joining the poles of a magnet or part of the frame of a motor or generator.
- 22A set of electromagnetic coils fitted around the neck of a cathode-ray tube that steers the electron beam across the screen.
- 23A Y-shaped stand that supports a blowpipe or punty while the glass on it is reheated in the glory hole.
- 24In medieval Kent, a measure of farmland equal to a fourth of a suling, about 50 to 60 acres, and so a small estate.
- 25A spell of work with a team of oxen or horses, roughly half a day, and by extension any work shift.
- 26To fasten a restraining collar around the neck of a prisoner or captive.
- 27To fit a frame around an animal's neck so it cannot push through a fence.
- 28To marry someone, often with the suggestion that marriage is a burden.
In short, I have the honour to be yoked to a young lady, who is, in plain English, for her standing, a very eminent scold.
1712, [Richard Steele], “TUESDAY, August 12, 1712”
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
Old English ġeoc ("yoke") became Middle English yok. It goes back to Proto-Germanic *juką and Proto-Indo-European *yugóm ("yoke"), built on *yewg- ("to join, tie together"). Yuga, jugum and yoga are doublets. The meanings for a piece of land and an amount of work probably came from how much ground yoked animals could plow in a set time.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- Middle English yok developed from Old English ġeoc, meaning “yoke”. en.wiktionary.org
- The word descends from Proto-Germanic *juką and Proto-Indo-European *yugóm, meaning “yoke”. en.wiktionary.org
- Proto-Indo-European *yugóm was formed from *yewg-. en.wiktionary.org
- The root *yewg- means “to join, tie together”. en.wiktionary.org
- Yuga, jugum and yoga are etymological doublets of yoke. en.wiktionary.org
- The land and work senses probably originated in the area yoked animals could plough within a given time. en.wiktionary.org
From Middle English yoken ("to put a yoke on a draft animal; to attach with a yoke; to bind"), from Old English ġeocian, from ġeoc ("yoke") + the verb-forming suffix -ian.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- The verb descends through Middle English yoken from Old English ġeocian. en.wiktionary.org
- Middle English yoken meant putting a yoke on a draft animal, attaching with a yoke, and binding. en.wiktionary.org
- Old English ġeocian is formed from ġeoc, meaning “yoke”, plus -ian. en.wiktionary.org
- Old English -ian forms verbs. en.wiktionary.org