crake

• Crake

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɹeɪk/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪk

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.

crake (plural crakes)

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

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.

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.

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.

crake (plural crakes)

1. (obsolete) A crack; a boast.

• Acker, Kacer, acker, creak