Crake
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Any of several birds of the family Rallidae that have short bills.
- 2 A crack; a boast. obsolete
- 3 Alternative letter-case form of crake. alt-of
- 4 any of several short-billed Old World rails wordnet
- 1 To cry out harshly and loudly, like a crake.
"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."
- 2 To boast; to speak loudly and boastfully. obsolete
"I hyred the to fyght agaynste Alexander, and not to crake and prate."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"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."
Etymology
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.
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.
Related phrases
More for "crake"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.