crake
English
Alternative forms
- Crake
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈkɹeɪk/
Audio (UK) (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.
Noun
crake (plural crakes)
- Any of several birds of the family Rallidae that have short bills.
Derived terms
- African crake
- Andaman crake
- (as syn. of corncrake) cracker
- Baillon's crake (Porzana pusilla)
- brown crake (Amaurornis akool)
- Colombian crake (Neocrex colombianus)
- corn-crake
- corn crake
- corncrake (Crex crex)
- crakeberry (Empetrum spp.}
- Laysan crake
- ocellated crake
- paint-billed crake
- spotless crake
- spotted crake (Porzana porzana)
- uniform crake
- water crake (Porzana porzana; Cinclus spp.; Rallus aquaticus)
Translations
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Verb
crake (third-person singular simple present crakes, present participle craking, simple past and past participle craked)
- 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.
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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)
- (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.
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Noun
crake (plural crakes)
- (obsolete) A crack; a boast.
Anagrams
- Acker, Kacer, acker, creak