paddock
1 Americannoun
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a small, usually enclosed field near a stable or barn for pasturing or exercising animals.
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the enclosure in which horses are saddled and mounted before a race.
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Australian. any enclosed field or pasture.
verb (used with object)
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paddocks,
present (3rd person singular)
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paddocked,
past participle, past
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paddocking
present participle
noun
noun
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a small enclosed field, often for grazing or training horses, usually near a house or stable
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(in horse racing) the enclosure in which horses are paraded and mounted before a race, together with the accompanying rooms
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(in motor racing) an area near the pits where cars are worked on before races
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any area of fenced land
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a playing field
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informal a stockroute or roadside area offering feed to sheep and cattle in dry times
verb
noun
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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paddocksimple
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paddockssimple
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have paddockedperfect
-
has paddockedperfect
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am paddockingprogressive
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are paddockingprogressive
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is paddockingprogressive
-
have been paddockingperfect progressive
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has been paddockingperfect progressive
Past
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paddockedsimple
-
had paddockedperfect
-
was paddockingprogressive
-
were paddockingprogressive
-
had been paddockingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of paddock1
1540–50; variant of Middle English parrok, with r heard as flapped d; Old English pearroc enclosure, originally fence. See park
Origin of paddock2
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English paddok(e), derivative of early Middle English pad “toad” (compare English dialectal pad “frog”); akin to Dutch, Low German pad, Old Norse padda; see -ock
Explanation
A paddock is an area that holds racehorses before a race. Jockeys get the horses ready to go in the paddock. If you've ever gone to a horse race, or seen a race like the Kentucky Derby on TV, you've seen a paddock. This is the pen for the horses, where they hang out before racing. In the paddock, horses are saddled and paraded around by their jockeys. Two other meanings of paddock are related: one is a field for horses on a farm, and the other is an area for race cars to prepare before a race.
Vocabulary lists containing paddock
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Orbiting Jupiter
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Sarah, Plain and Tall
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
At the 170-acre vineyard, horses and cows graze in a paddock; their dung is used for fertilizer.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
He took the unusual step of leaving the paddock between final practice and qualifying to try to get himself in the right head space for the session.
From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2026
"I don't think we're allowed enough paddock passes in F1 to bring them all in," he says.
From BBC ● Apr. 30, 2026
The Vienna native had already made a fortune as a tech investor before he set foot on a Formula One paddock.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 28, 2026
His chickens do eat non-organic grain, but they “see a new paddock of fresh green grass every day.”
From "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan
Away from Formula One paddocks and movie sets, Verhoeven's story began amid a turbulent childhood in Bergen op Zoom, near the Belgian border.
From BBC ● May 22, 2026
Our research found over half of our cheesemakers were using multiple methods to reduce whey going to waste, from making animal feed to making ricotta to irrigating paddocks.
From Salon ● Oct. 22, 2024
The property is miles from the highway, accessible on two-lane roads lined by horse paddocks, white fences and canopies of gnarled live oaks.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 23, 2024
The ducks follow a daily routine: In the morning, they go to the vineyards to prevent crop damage, and in the evening they return to their paddocks to peck at pellets of nutritious bird food.
From Reuters ● Jan. 16, 2023
Down the middle of the valley ran a stream with marshy paddocks on either side.
From "The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm" by Nancy Farmer
I've got the car paddocked down near the reserve.
From The Lost Valley by James Morgan Walsh
A sound like "Goood!" came from the paddocked bull.
From Thy Rocks and Rills by Robert E. Gilbert
We had a beautiful, still morning for our ride, and reached the station—a shed standing out on the plain—in time to see our horses safely paddocked before the train started for Christchurch.
From Station Life in New Zealand by Lady (Mary Anne) Barker
Wild and shy, as paddocked merinos always are, these had withdrawn to the quietest places they could find, and were there making the best of a bad job.
From Such Is Life by Joseph Furphy
Shakespeare himself would have been commonplace had he been paddocked in a thinly shaven vocabulary, and Phidias, had he worked in wax, only a more inspired Mrs. Jarley.
From The Library and Society Reprints of Papers and Addresses by Arthur Elmore Bostwick
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
