Cambridge in Chunks: Dockey

No longer a word that is in use these days, but a word you might have heard around Cambridgeshire if you were here a century ago was dockey. Before I explain what it means, I should say that there is no record of this word being written, so it may well also be spelled dockie or docky.

The word simply means lunch, and if you’re wondering what the connection is, it actually has a very simple origin. Although workers have many rights today, such as the right to a lunchbreak, this wasn’t always the case. So, if a worker took a lunchbreak, he might be docked some of his pay. In other words, his boss might not pay his wages for the time that he was having lunch.

It might not be very common nowadays because many businesses would get in trouble, but an employee could be threatened that their pay will be docked if they are late for work or if they break something.

It’s not certain if it is the case, but there is also an interesting theory that the phrase doggy bag originated from dockey bag. If you didn’t know, a doggy bag is what you might ask for in a restaurant if you wanted to take home some of your dinner that you didn’t finish. This may have arisen because many workers would carry their lunch in a bag, hence dockey bag.