1 [VN] ~ sb/sth (with sth) to quickly push your fingers or another object into sb/sth:
She poked him in the ribs with her elbow. * She poked her elbow into his ribs. * I'm sick of being poked and prodded by doctors. * She got up and poked the fire (= to make it burn more strongly).
2 [VN+adv./prep.] to push sth somewhere or move it in a particular direction with a small quick movement:
He poked his head around the corner to check that nobody was coming. * Someone had poked a message under the door. * Don't poke her eye out with that stick!
3 [V+adv./prep.] if an object is poking out of, through, etc. sth, you can see a part of it that is no longer covered by sth else:
The end of the cable was left poking out of the wall. * A bony elbow poked through a hole in his sweater. * Clumps of grass poked up through the snow.
4 [VN+adv./prep.] ~ a hole in sth (with sth) to make a hole in sth by pushing your finger or another object into it:
The kids poked holes in the ice with sticks.
5 [VN] (slang, !!!) (of a man) to have sex with sb
IDIOMS
poke fun at sb/sth to say unkind things about sb/sth in order to make other people laugh at them:
Her novels poke fun at the upper class. * She's always poking fun at herself.
moreatNOSEn.
PHRASALVERBS
poke about / around (informal) to look for sth, especially sth that is hidden among other things that you have to move:
The police spent the day poking around in his office but found nothing. * (figurative) We've had journalists poking around and asking a lot of questions.
poke at sth to push a pointed object, your finger, etc. at sth repeatedly with small quick movements:
He poked at the spaghetti with a fork.
Part of speech: noun
1 [C,usually sing.] the action of quickly pushing your fingers or another object into sb/sth:
to give the fire a poke * He gave me a poke in the ribs to wake me up.
2 [U] (BrE) power in a car:
I prefer something with a bit more poke.
IDIOMS
have a poke around (informal) to look carefully around a place to see what you can find; to try to find out information about sb/sth:
His mother often goes into his room and has a good old poke around.
take a poke at sb/sth (old-fashioned, AmE, informal) to make an unkind remark about sb/sth; to laugh at sb/sth
moreatPIGn.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for poke is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is poke a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, poke is tagged as verb.
Does poke appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — poke appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
