The process of a ship or spacecraft connecting to a pier, port, or station, or removing part of something (like an animal's tail).
From Middle Dutch 'dok,' meaning 'dock' or 'basin.' For ships, the term emerged in the 1500s-1600s as maritime trade expanded. The meaning 'to cut off' comes from a separate older verb 'dock' (to cut short), creating two different uses for the same word.
Modern space missions use the same docking terminology that sailors have used for 500 years—when the International Space Station connects to a resupply ship, astronauts are using nautical language, which shows how maritime vocabulary shaped how we think about space.
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