Obs. exc. Sc. Forms: 5 cambok, -oke, -ake, 6 camok, -oke, -ock, -ocke, (7 cambuc(k), 6, 9 Sc. cammock, 9 Sc. camack. [ME. kambok, app. immediately ad. cambuca, a late L. word (Du Cange cites Papias cambuta, sustentamen vel baculus, flexus, pedum, crocia, and Gloss. Corbeiense, cambuta, baculus episcoporum), app. of Gaulish origin, derived from cambo-, crooked, CAM; represented in mod. Welsh by camawg, camog fem. ‘piece of bent wood, the felloe of a wheel.’ Cf. also Gaelic camag ‘curl, ringlet, crook,’ and Manx camag ‘crutch, crooked bat or shinty to play hurles, also the game itself.’
But some of the senses of the Manx word may be from Eng.; for the Irish and Gaelic for a bent stick for hurling, shinty, hockey, a golf-club, is caman, caman.]
1. A crooked staff, a crook; esp. a stick or club with a crooked head, used in games to drive a ball, or the like; a hockey-stick; hence, the game played with such a stick.
c. 1425. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 666. (Nomina Ludorum) Hoc pedum, cambok.
1483. Cath. Angl., 52. A Cambake [v.r. Camboke], cambuca.
1547. Salesbury, Welsh Dict., Kamoc, a camocke.
1720. Stow’s Surv. (ed. Strype, 1754), I. I. xxix. 302/2. People please themselves … some in Hand-ball, Foot-ball, Bandy-ball, and in Cambuck.
1821. Caledonian Mercury, 22 Jan., 3/3. On Christmas and New Year’s day, matches were played … at the camack and foot-ball.
1885. Inverness 30 Yrs. ago, ii. 80. A numerous party played a game of Cammack.
2. A crooked stick or piece of wood, a knee of timber; a cambrel.
c. 1450. Nominale, in Wr.-Wülcker, 724. (Nomina domo pertinentia) Hec cambuca, a cambok.
c. 1510. Barclay, Mirr. Good Mann. (1570), B vj. Soone crooketh the same tree that good camoke wilbe, As a common prouerbe in youth I heard this sayde.
1580. Lyly, Euphues (Arb.), 237. Crooked trees proue good Cammocks. Ibid., 408. If my fortune bee so yll that searching for a wande, I gather a camocke.
1593. Drayton, Eclog., VII. 62. And earely crook’d that will a Camocke bee.
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, 815. This tendon … maketh an empty cauity, through which the Butchers peirce their Cammockes to hang the beast vpon in the shambles.
