What Does "Thock" Mean?

The word “thock” gets thrown around a lot in the mechanical keyboard community, but what does it actually mean? Well to put it simply, thock is a word used to describe a deeper sound signature in mechanical keyboards.

Some people strive to get the “thockiest” keyboard possible with the use of certain materials of foam, plates, and other parts as well. Now that does not mean that anything other than thocky keyboards is bad because a lot of keyboards also produce a nice-sounding clack as well, but the issue with these two terms is that there are a plethora of keyboard sound signatures that fall in between the two terms thock and clack, so despite them being fun words to use, it really isn’t the best way to go about describing how a keyboard sounds.

The way I would go describing how a keyboard sounds is by putting it into categories of three: volume, pitch, and depth. The reason for this is that you can get more technical about how a board sounds when you've categorized the sound into groups. The keyboard in question might have a softer volume in terms of loudness but could have a higher pitch to it, and have a fuller sound signature that doesn’t sound thin. Putting it into categories like this makes it a lot easier to understand exactly how a keyboard sounds and other people in the community do this as well. Another well-known blog writer/review called “ThereminGoat” also made a full article going over this topic where he went into even more categories mainly focusing on how the switches themselves sound as well. He put them into the following categories: Volume, Pitch, Depth of Sound, Smoothness, Ping, Rattle, Material Sounds, Grinding, and lastly Popping. He definitely went into a lot more detail about this topic as they know a lot about it first hand. Also take a look at this video with inputs from some of the most famous members in the community:

Asking Top Keyboard Creators - What is Thock?

At the end of the day, Thock is a very common word that a lot of people like to throw around to describe any keyboard that sounds “deep”, but it isn’t really the best way to describe how a keyboard truly sounds, and I suggest you experiment with your keyboards and switches, so you can get a first hand feel for what thock and clack sound in-person.