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CLOCKS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
European weed naturalized in southwestern United States and Mexico having reddish decumbent stems with small fernlike leaves and small deep reddish-lavender flowers followed by slender fruits that stick straight up; often grown for forage
Synonyms:
alfilaria; alfileria; clocks; Erodium cicutarium; filaree; filaria; pin clover; pin grass; redstem storksbill
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("clocks" is a kind of...):
heron's bill; storksbill (any of various plants of the genus Erodium)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Present simple (third person singular) of the verb clock
Context examples:
Plant biologists at University of California, Davis have discovered how sunflowers use their internal circadian "clocks," acting on growth hormones, to follow the sun during the day as they grow.
(Sunflowers move from east to west, and back, by the clock, NSF)
They found that altering the activity of a gene called Cdk5 appeared to make the clocks run faster than normal, and the flies older than their chronological age.
(NIH scientists search for the clocks behind aging brain disorders, National Institutes of Health)
By some juggling of the clocks it is quite possible that they may have got Scott Eccles to bed earlier than he thought, but in any case it is likely that when Garcia went out of his way to tell him that it was one it was really not more than twelve.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The clocks were striking midnight and the rooms were very still as a figure glided quietly from bed to bed, smoothing a coverlet here, settling a pillow there, and pausing to look long and tenderly at each unconscious face, to kiss each with lips that mutely blessed, and to pray the fervent prayers which only mothers utter.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Researchers use these clocks to estimate biologic age, which can then be compared to chronologic age.
(Older biologic age linked to elevated breast cancer risk, National Institutes of Health)
It was done; and Catherine found herself alone in the gallery before the clocks had ceased to strike.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
I heard the clocks strike twelve, and was still reading, without knowing what I read, when Agnes touched me.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
While the individual clocks in different organs peak at different times, this didn’t result in complete chaos.
(Plants can tell time even without a brain, University of Cambridge)
To understand the link between aging and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, scientists from the National Institutes of Health compared the genetic clocks that tick during the lives of normal and mutant flies.
(NIH scientists search for the clocks behind aging brain disorders, National Institutes of Health)
They used three different measures, called epigenetic clocks, to estimate biologic age.
(Older biologic age linked to elevated breast cancer risk, National Institutes of Health)
