croak

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See also: Croak

English

Etymology

From Middle English *croken, crouken, (also represented by craken > crake), back-formation from Old English crācettan (“to croak”) (also in derivative crǣcettung (“croaking”)), from Proto-Germanic *krēk- (compare Swedish kråka, German krächzen), potentially from Proto-Indo-European *greh₂-g- (compare Sanskrit गर्जति (garjati, “to growl”); also Latin grāculus (“jackdaw”), Serbo-Croatian grákati from *greh₂-k-), of onomatopoeic origin.

Pronunciation

Noun

croak (plural croaks)

  1. A faint, harsh sound made in the throat.
  2. The call of a frog or toad. (see also ribbit)
  3. The harsh call of various birds, such as the raven or corncrake, or other creatures.

Translations

the harsh sound of various birds, particularly the raven or crow — see caw

Verb

croak (third-person singular simple present croaks, present participle croaking, simple past and past participle croaked)

  1. (intransitive) To make a croak.
  2. (transitive) To utter in a low, hoarse voice.
  3. (intransitive, of a frog, toad, raven, or various other birds or animals) To make its sound.
  4. (slang) To die.
  5. (transitive, slang) To kill someone or something.
    He'd seen my face, so I had to croak him.
    • 1920 June, The Electrical Experimenter, New York, page 216, column 2:
      "It was me. And I'm glad, damned glad, I didn't croak him. With this slick guy after me, it would be me for the chair."
    • 1925, G. K. Chesterton, The Arrow of Heaven (first published in Nash's Pall Mall Magazine, Jul 1925)
      If Wilton croaked the criminal he did a jolly good day's work, and there's an end of it.
  6. To complain; especially, to grumble; to forebode evil; to utter complaints or forebodings habitually.
  7. (programming slang, Perl) To abort the current program indicating a user or caller error.
    • 2002, Nathan Patwardhan, Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour, Perl, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 200:
      The accessor croaks if it's not an appropriate object reference.

Derived terms

Translations

of a raven, to make its sound — see caw
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