poke

1. (US, slang) A lazy person; a dawdler.Examples: "The slowness of this stupid poke tortures me to death."; "To the uninitiated he looked like a slow old poke; but his string would lengthen out in a most mysterious way , and it was the height of our ambition to set as much and as clean a proof as old John."; "I never saw such an old poke. You come up here and expect me to do some things for you, and then you stand around as though you were made of bone!"USslang

2. (US, slang) A stupid or uninteresting person.Examples: "I see you shaking your head at me, mother, and reminding me of 'That mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me;' but I don't believe I go on so; if I have nothing to say I keep still, and you'd better be a stupid poke, which I often feel myself, than waste the time with such trash."; "She was only sixteen, and he was perfectly splendid, and she has plenty of money, and every one talked about it; and when she went anywhere, people looked, you know, and she liked it; but her papa is an old poke, so he's sent them all away. It's too bad, for she was the jolliest thing I ever knew ."; "I think you are all reasonably well aware that the common picture of the surveying and mapping profession is proabably best exemplified at the present time by the old poke who is out with a rickety old transit, wearing old ragged clothes."USslang

3. (US) A device to prevent an animal from leaping or breaking through fences, consisting of a yoke with a pole inserted, pointed forward.Examples: "I find from their testimony , which was not contradicted , that the placing of such a poke upon such a colt in such a pasture is not considered dangerous, and that farmers are accustomed so to poke their own horses, but that they are not accustomed to put pokes on or 'hamper' horses owned by other persons without the authorization of the owner."; "This yoke or poke will prevent any horse from scaling a fence, if well made."US

4. (computing, dated) The storage of a value in a memory address, typically to modify the behaviour of a program or to cheat at a video game.Examples: "[…] everywhere you see listings festooned with Goto statements and peppered with peeks and pokes."; "One of the major limitations is that the Commodore 64 does not easily support auto-repeat (it must be turned on by a poke instruction from BASIC)."; "Perhaps all those super hackers who so regularly produce infinite lives etc. could produce pokes to be used by 128K users."dated

5. (informal, social media) A notification sent to get another user's attention on social media or an instant messenger.Examples: "It could be described as a poke, but not a friendly one. For those who have not yet succumbed to Facebook, the latest craze on the internet, a ‘poke’ is an electronic greeting sent, for example, to an old friend from university."informal

6. (baseball, slang) A hit, especially an extra base hit.slang

1. (archaic or Appalachia) A sack or bag.Examples: "And then he drew a dial from his poke, And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says very wisely, ‘It is ten o'clock[…]’"; "When the Pig is proffered, hold vp the poke."; "And suddainly vntyes the Poke, Which out of it sent such a smoke, As ready was them all to choke, So greeuous was the pother […]"Appalachiaarchaic

2. (Scotland, Northern Ireland) An ice cream cone or a bag of chipsNorthern-IrelandScotland

1. (dialectal) Pokeweed, and its berries.Examples: "[W]hen rodents were scarce they ate chestnuts and rhubarb and poke and other wild food[.]"Synonyms: the list at pokeweeddialectaluncountable

1. (Hawaii) Slices or cubes of raw fish or other raw seafood, mixed with sesame oil, seaweed, sea salt, herbs, spices, or other flavorful ingredients.Examples: "Though I'd often eaten sashimi, poke was then completely new to me—delicious rubies of cubed fish dressed in light sesame oil, garnished with minced bits of reddish-brown seaweed and the ground centers of kukui nuts (see recipe, next page)."; "The fishmonger offered the poke in plastic tubs, without ceremony, just as I had always known it in Honolulu, where I grew up and where some of the best poke is sold at a liquor store, Tamura’s. Then, a few years back, poke started appearing on stray restaurant menus, sometimes identified as Hawaiian crudo or ceviche."Hawaiiuncountable