Word of the Day

: July 11, 2012

tucket

noun TUCK-ut

What It Means

: a fanfare on a trumpet

tucket in Context

The tucket sounded, and everyone rose as the king and queen entered the courtyard.

"Bare unisons of woodwind, trumpets, and horns exchange sennets and tuckets." -- From a classical music review by Edward Seckerson in The Independent (London), July 25, 1997

Did You Know?

"Tucket" can be found most notably in the stage directions of several of William Shakespeare's plays. In King Lear, for example, a tucket sounds to alert the Earl of Gloucester of the arrival of the Duke of Cornwall (Act II, Scene i). The word "tucket" is thought to derive from the obsolete English verb "tuk," meaning "to beat a drum" or "to sound a trumpet." These days, the word "fanfare" itself refers to a sounding of trumpets made in celebration or to alert one of another's arrival. The presence of "fanfare" might be the reason that "tucket" is rarely used in contemporary English.