English Explanatory Dictionary

crook

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A bend; turn; curve; curvature; a flexure.
  2. A bending of the knee; a genuflection.
  3. A bent or curved part; a curving piece or portion (of anything).
  4. A lock or curl of hair.
  5. A support beam consisting of a post with a cross-beam resting upon it; a bracket or truss consisting of a vertical piece, a horizontal piece, and a strut.
  6. A specialized staff with a semi-circular bend (a "hook") at one end used by shepherds to control their herds.
  7. A bishop's standard staff of office.
  8. An artifice; a trick; a contrivance.
  9. A person who steals, lies, cheats or does other dishonest or illegal things; a criminal.
  10. A pothook.
  11. A small tube, usually curved, applied to a trumpet, horn, etc., to change its pitch or key.
verb
  1. To bend, or form into a hook.
  2. To become bent or hooked.
  3. To turn from the path of rectitude; to pervert; to misapply; to twist.
adj
  1. Bad, unsatisfactory, not up to standard.
  2. Ill, sick.
  3. Annoyed, angry; upset.
name
  1. A town (unparished) in County Durham, England (OS grid ref NZ1635).
  2. A village and civil parish (served by Crook and Winster Parish Council) in Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, England, previously in South Lakeland district (OS grid ref SD4695).
  3. A statutory town in Logan County, Colorado, United States, named after George Crook.
  4. An unincorporated community in Osage County, Missouri, United States, so named because of a local merchant's business practices (thus being derived from crook (thief)).
  5. A surname.

Pronunciation

/kɹʊk/ [kɹ̠̊˔ʷʊk] /kɹʉk/ /kɹuːk/ EN-AU ck1 crook.ogg

Word forms

crook crooks crooking crooked crooker crookest

Etymology

From Middle English croke, crok, from Old English *crōc (“hook, bend, crook”), from Proto-West Germanic *krōk, from Proto-Germanic *krōkaz (“bend, hook”), from Proto-Indo-European *greg- (“tracery, basket, bend”). Cognate with Dutch kreuk (“a bend, fold, wrinkle”), Middle Low German kroke, krake (“fold, wrinkle”), Danish krog (“crook, hook”), Swedish krok (“crook, hook”), Icelandic krókur (“hook”). Compare typologically Czech křivák (< křivý < Proto-Slavic *krivъ, whence also *krivьda).

Synonyms

criminal

Related words

crook and nanny

Derived words

acrook apple crook arm in crook by hook or by crook by hook or crook crookback crookbacked crookbill crookery crook in the lot crookle crookneck Crook of Devon crook of the arm cruckle cybercrook on the crook pool at the crook throw-crook crooked crook one's elbow knee-crooking uncrook crook as Rookwood Crook County
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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