2. A wooden bar or frame used to join draft animals at the heads or necks so they could pull a plow or a heavy load together.
3. A bind or tie that keeps people together, positively or negatively; such as the yoke of love or the yoke of marriage.
4. If two or more people or things are yoked together, they are forced to be closely linked or joined with each other, or the yoking of an unhappy situation: "He was yoked to his job because he couldn't find employment in any other occupation."
5. Something which causes people to be treated cruelly and unfairly; especially, by taking away their freedom: "The people of this country have struggled to free themselves from the yoke of foreign rule and the yoke of tyranny."
6. An oppressive force or influence; a crushing burden or weight; such as, under the yoke of heavy taxes to support a government's inefficient economic policies.
7. In medicine, a tissue connecting two structures.
8. Etymology: "yoke" was developed from Old English geoc, "yoke"; from Latin jugum, "joining, yoke"; related to jungere, "to join".
The etymological idea underlying yoke is of "joining"; including the "joining of two animals together", or the joining of people; as, "they were joined together by the yoke of friendship" or "they were yoked together in marriage".
"A rubber yoke held the two wires together."
2. Pair, team, brace, couple: "It takes a yoke of oxen to pull that wagon."3. Bondage, slavery, enslavement, servitude; serfdom, vassalage: "Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves from their yoke of bondage."
2. Object of ridicule, a laughing-stock; fool, buffoon, clown, village idiot, bumpkin: "Melvin was the joke of the town because of his silly hair style."
Bertha, use caution with yoke and yolk or the joke will be on you!
"A travel writer once wrote about being in Mexico, where 'we saw people carrying baskets on yolks across their shoulders.' The writer 'took pictures of the yolked and harnessed figures.' "
"Another writer told of a gentleman who knows when his body needs fuel: He eats 'potatoes, pasta, salad, eggs (without the yokes) and pancakes.' "
"Well, folks, oxen have yokes and eggs have yolks, and anyone who carries baskets on yolks is going to have a messy shirt" . . . and that's no joke!
It is not a joke; the yolk of an egg is a very good medium for mixing colors for painting. His friend, who was a painter, used this medium to paint a mural depicting the yoke of bondage of miners who lived in an impoverished country.