chock-full: [14] There is more than one theory to account for this word. It occurs in a couple of isolated instances around 1400, as chokkefulle and chekeful, prompting speculation that the first element may be either chock ‘wooden block’, which came from an assumed Old Northern French *choque (thus ‘stuffed full with lumps of wood’) or cheek (thus ‘full up as far as the cheeks’). It resurfaces in the 17th century as choke-ful, which has given rise to the idea that it may originally have meant ‘so full as to choke’. The available evidence seems too scanty to come to a firm conclusion.
c. 1400, chokkeful "crammed full," possibly from choke "cheek" (see cheek (n.)). Or it may be from Old French choquier "collide, crash, hit" (13c., Modern French choquer), which is probably from Germanic (compare Middle Dutch schokken; see shock (n.1)).
