🪝 A meat hanger 👊 A large fist

meathook

1 4.4

A large strong hook for hanging meat in a butcher shop

noun
/ˈmiːtˌhʊk/

Specialized

: gancho de carne

In the busy slaughterhouse, workers constantly relied on meathooks to manage large quantities of meat.

Examples

She carefully hooked the large ham onto the meathook to keep it off the ground.
Hanging there... ...like a rabbit on a meathook!

The Rainbow Thief (1994)
Watch the meathooks!

Fiction book (1995)
Butch Meathook, sniper.

Small Soldiers (1998)
The butcher used a meathook to hang the freshly slaughtered cow.

Synonyms

meat hook

vsmeathook

3 4.8

A strong pointed hook for hanging dead animals in a butcher shop

is the single word form for the same implement used in butchery

Surface Forms

meathook singular

meathooks plural

Morphology

meathook = meat + hook (transparent) = meat + hook

A straightforward compound of 'meat' + 'hook' referring to a hook used for hanging meat, which learners can derive from the parts.

Etymology

Meathook comes from the simple parts meat ('meat') and hook ('a curved piece of metal'), so it means a large, strong hook used to hang meat in a butcher's shop.