British Dialect. a farm, especially a dairy farm.
Archaic. a village; hamlet.
a cord or band of loosely twisted or woven fibres, as in a candle, cigarette lighter, etc, that supplies fuel to a flame by capillary action
slang to cause irritation to a person
lively or active
alive or crawling
a dog wick with fleas
First recorded before 1000; Middle English wek(e), wik(e), wicke, Old English wēoce; cognate with Middle Dutch wiecke, Middle Low German wêke, weike, Old High German wioh, wiohha “lint, wick,” German Wieke, Wike “lint”
Origin uncertain
First recorded before 900; Middle English wik(e), wek(e), Old English wīc “residence, dwelling, house, village” (compare Old Saxon wīc, Old High German wîch ), from Latin vīcus “village, estate”; cognate with Greek oîkos, woîkos “house”
A wick is the little string in the middle of a candle. When you burn your favorite pumpkin spice candle, you light the wick with a match. Most candle wicks are made of thin, braided cotton that extends throughout the candle's length. As the wick burns, the wax around it melts. Old-fashioned oil lamps also use wicks to draw oil up and allow a flame to burn slowly. This leads to wick as a verb: "to absorb or draw by capillary action." When a liquid flows in a narrow space, that's wicking. Your quick-dry exercise clothes, for example, wick sweat away from your body.
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He showed her how to use one of her shoelaces to fashion a wick.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 25, 2025
Nguyen’s prose is the wick that ignited the charges he set on our screens.
From Salon ● Apr. 22, 2024
Trains from Inverness to Aberdeen, Perth and wick were also impacted.
From BBC ● Dec. 27, 2023
The hall was hot, lit by wick lamps, the power tripped off ahead of the forthcoming flood.
From Slate ● Dec. 16, 2023
Its wick emitted a gentle hiss and soft yellow light as a tiny petal of flame danced inside its glass hexagon.
From "Healer of the Water Monster" by Brian Young
It was as poignant and heart-wrenching as anything he said in the whole interview about “John Wick 3,” the film he was there to promote.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 18, 2026
But longtime tech portfolio manager Paul Wick says the sector still faces big questions around AI.
From Barron's ● Apr. 15, 2026
David Wick, an English and Latin teacher at Lake Forest, said Koh seemed “more excited about his business ventures than about Latin.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 11, 2026
"Untitled John Wick Game", as it is currently known, will be made by Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 developer Saber Interactive and include input from film franchise director Chad Stahelsk.
From BBC ● Feb. 13, 2026
Wick stood at the far end of the roof, his arms raised toward the sky.
From "Shadowshaper" by Daniel José Older
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.
