Craw
name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The stomach of an animal. archaic
- 2 a pouch in many birds and some lower animals that resembles a stomach for storage and preliminary maceration of food wordnet
- 3 The crop of a bird.
- 1 To caw, crow. archaic
"The night was now pitmirk; the wind soughed amid the head-stones and railings of the gentry, (for we must all die,) and the black corbies in the steeple-holes cackled and crawed in a fearsome manner."
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"It stuck in his craw that he was forced to step down from his position after 40 years."
Etymology
Late Middle English, also attested as craue, from or related to Middle Dutch crāghe or Middle Low German crāghe (“collar, neck”), from Proto-Germanic *kragô (“throat”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *gʷrogʰ- or *gʷrh₃-gʰ- (“throat, gullet”), whence also Proto-Celtic *brāgants (“throat, gullet”) and perhaps Ancient Greek βρόχθος (brókhthos, “throat”). The root appears to be an extension of Proto-Indo-European *gʷerh₃- (“to swallow, devour”), though the identity and meaning of the suffix is unclear. Compare Latin gurges (“gulf, bay; whirlpool, eddy”). Other Germanic cognates include Danish krave, German Kragen (“collar”) and Old Dutch kraga (“neck”) (whence modern Dutch kraag). See also crag (Etymology 2).
* As a Scottish and Irish surname, variant of Crow. * As a German surname, from a variant of Grau, Krahe, Kray.
Related phrases
More for "craw"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.