crook
/kɹʊk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.41 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A bending of the knee; a genuflection.
noun
A person who steals, lies, cheats, or does other dishonest or illegal things; a criminal; a scoundrel, scofflaw, lawbreaker, rogue, or miscreant.
noun
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.
Obsolete
noun
A specialized staff with a semi-circular bend (a "hook") at one end used by shepherds to control their herds.
Example Sentences
- "She held the baby in the crook of her arm."
- "he walks bye lanes, and crooks"
- "the crook of a cane"
- "It was flood-tide along Fifth Avenue; motor, brougham, and victoria swept by on the glittering current; pretty women glanced out from limousine and tonneau; young men of his own type, silk-hatted, frock-coated, the crooks of their walking sticks tucked up under their left arms, passed on the Park side."
- "In these early days of silent pictures, the accent was chiefly on thrills and danger as provided by supposedly unstoppable locomotives with crooks or maniacs on the footplate."
- "1973 November 17, Richard Nixon, reported 1973 November 18, The Washington Post, Nixon Tells Editors, ‘I'm Not a Crook’, "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I′m not a crook. I′ve earned everything I′ve got.""
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).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /kɹʊk/
- British English: /kɹʊk/