wharf

From Middle English wharf, from Old English hwearf (“heap, embankment, wharf”); related to Old English hweorfan (“to turn”), Old Saxon hwerf (whence German Werft and Warft), Dutch werf, Old High German hwarb (“a turn”), hwerban (“to turn”), Old Norse hvarf (“circle”), and Ancient Greek καρπός (karpós, “wrist”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /wɔːf/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /wɔɹf/, (without the wine–whine merger) /ʍ-/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)f

wharf (plural wharves or wharfs)

1. (nautical) An artificial landing place for ships on a riverbank or shore.

   Synonyms: dock, quay

   Hyponyms: jetty, pier, (Northern England) staith, (Northern England) staithe

   • 1834–1874, George Bancroft, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent, volume (please specify |volume=I to X), Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company [et al.], →OCLC:

     Commerce pushes its wharves into the sea.

   • 1842, Alfred Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, part IV, page 86:

     Out upon the wharfs they came, / Knight and burgher, lord and dame, / And round the prow they read her name, / The Lady of Shalott.

2. The bank of a river, or the shore of the sea.
   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene v]:

     the fat weed that roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf

wharf (third-person singular simple present wharfs, present participle wharfing, simple past and past participle wharfed)

1. (transitive) To secure by a wharf.
2. (transitive) To place on a wharf.

• wharf on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• wharf (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• wherf, wharfe, warrf, wharghfe

From Old English hwearf.

• IPA^(key): /hwarf/

wharf (plural wharves)

1. wharf

• wharfage

• English: wharf
• Scots: wharf

• “wharf, n.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2019-12-12.