lockage

English

Etymology

From lock +‎ -age.

Noun

lockage (countable and uncountable, plural lockages)

1. Materials for locks in a canal.
2. The works forming a canal lock or locks.
   • 1952 April, C. R. Clinker and Gordon Biddle, “Swannington and Ticknall Today”, in Railway Magazine, page 265:

     This line had been constructed as provided for in the Act of incorporation of May 7, 1794, to avoid the use of lockage on the branch canals authorised as feeders to the main waterway.

3. A toll paid for passing the locks of a canal.
4. The amount of elevation and descent made by the locks of a canal.
   • 1829, De Witt Clinton, a letter

   The entire lockage will be about fifty feet.

5. (colloquial) A situation where things lock together.
   • 2009 April 10, Linda Barnard, “Hannah Montana: The Movie: Down-home girl”, in Toronto Star‎^[1]:

     But first, a bunch of songs, some down-home cracker-barrel advice, a few gallons of lemonade, pratfalls and cornball humour and her first onscreen kiss — which begins barely half in camera range and moves out of sight before real lip lockage commences.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “lockage”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)