crake

English

Alternative forms

• Crake

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɹeɪk/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪk

Etymology 1

From Middle English crak, crake, from Old Norse kráka (“crow”), from Proto-Germanic *krak-, *kra- (“to croak, caw”), from Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂-, itself onomatopoeic.

English Wikipedia has an article on:

Rallidae

Wikipedia

Noun

crake (plural crakes)

1. Any of several birds of the family Rallidae that have short bills.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

crake (third-person singular simple present crakes, present participle craking, simple past and past participle craked)

1. To cry out harshly and loudly, like a crake.
   • 1854 October, “MIDNIGHT IN JULY”, in The Kerry Magazine: A Monthly Journal of Antiquities, Polite Literature, Poetry, volume 1, number 10, page 159:

     How still ! how very still it is, So silent it appears, E'en from its intensity, To tingle in mine ears. I hear the sheep-bell far away In the calm breathless night; The corncrake begins to crake . Crake, crake, with all its might.

   • 1872, Bertha E. Wright, Marvels from nature; or, A second visit to aunt Bessie, page 175:

     'How very disagreeable!' said Annie; 'perhaps the birds took it in turn to crake.'

   • 1951, The Listener - Volume 46, page 90:

     Of course, a corncrake, as its name suggests, likes to crake among the corn and hayfields, so that in fact you are unlikely ever to confuse it with the spotted crake, a bird to which dry land is almost anathema.

Etymology 2

From Middle English craken, from Old English cracian, from Proto-West Germanic *krakōn, from Proto-Germanic *krakōną.

Cognate with Saterland Frisian kroakje, West Frisian kreakje, Dutch kraken, Low German kraken, French craquer (< Germanic), German krachen.

Verb

crake (third-person singular simple present crakes, present participle craking, simple past and past participle craked)

1. (obsolete) To boast; to speak loudly and boastfully.
   • 1526, The Hundred Merry Tales; Or, Shakespeare's Jest Book:

     I hyred the to fyght agaynste Alexander, and not to crake and prate.

   • 1559, The Mirror for Magistrates:

     Each man may crake of that which was his own.

   • 1600, Phaer's Virgil:

     With him I threatned to be quite, and great things did I crake.

   • 1721, John Strype, Ecclesiastical memorials:

     And he that thus doth shal have smal pleasure in his awn rightwysnes, nor no gret lust to crake of his awn deserts or meryts.

Noun

crake (plural crakes)

1. (obsolete) A crack; a boast.

Anagrams

• Acker, Kacer, acker, creak