bockey

B3O1C3K5E1Y4

noun

A large basket woven from oak splints.

Scrabble 17

Meanings

nounbockey (plural bockeys)

plural bockeys

  1. New YorkUSarchaicdialectalA large basket woven from oak splints.

    Many augmented their income by making baskets known as “bockeys."

    2010, Ronnie Clark Coffey, Harriman State Park, page 17
    2 more examples

    The large baskets, called Bockeys (the old Dutch word for basket), used for toting this charcoal, were, I believe, the forerunners of the present-day Adirondack pack basket.

    1947 Spring, A. T. Shorey, “Ma and Pa Pitt”, in New York Folklore Quarterly, volume 3, number 1, page 38

    Even the coming of the New York Thruway and the connections for the Garden State Parkway had failed to alter the setting as an heirloom of troop movements of long ago, of the rattle of early stagecoaches, and of the "bockeys” —these were mountain people who continued to weave baskets of oak splints and bring them down to sell in Ladentown, Rockland County, New York, and perhaps elsewhere.

    1983, Henry Charlton Beck, Tales and Towns of Northern New Jersey, page 118

Origin

  1. Dutchbakkie
  2. Englishbockey

From Dutch bakkie, bakje, or less likely bokaal (“bowl, cup”).

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

bockey. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bockey

MLA

“bockey.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bockey. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “bockey,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bockey.

Source: bockey on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.