In ice hockey, the puck is the small, hard, flat round piece of black rubber that players hit with a stick and try to send into the goal. It is to hockey what a ball is to football: the thing the whole game turns on. It slides fast on ice, hurts if it hits you, and is too heavy and awkward to be a toy. People may use puck in a few related games, but ice hockey is its home. Though actually, English has another Puck on the same spelling: a cheeky fairy in old folk stories and in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. That fairy comes from Old English puca, a goblin, related to Old Norse púki, and is a doublet of pooka. The hockey puck is a different story — from, or at least shaped by, Irish poc, a stroke in the game of hurling (there is also an English verb to puck, to hit; compare poke). When someone says the puck, they almost always mean the hockey one, unless they are talking about a play.