Cricket

//ˈkɹɪkᵻt// noun, verb, slang

noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An insect in the order Orthoptera, especially family Gryllidae, that makes a chirping sound by rubbing its wing casings against combs on its hind legs.
  2. 2
    A game played outdoors with bats and a ball between two teams of eleven, popular in England and many Commonwealth countries. uncountable
  3. 3
    A wooden footstool. dialectal

    "Heawe’er I pood o Cricket, on keaw’rt meh deawn ith Nook, o side oth' Hob"

  4. 4
    a game played with a ball and bat by two teams of 11 players; teams take turns trying to score runs wordnet
  5. 5
    An insect in the order Orthoptera, especially family Gryllidae, that makes a chirping sound by rubbing its wing casings against combs on its hind legs.; In the form crickets: absolute silence; no communication. US, humorous, in-plural, slang
Show 6 more definitions
  1. 6
    An act that is fair and sportsmanlike. British, uncountable

    "Robbins went on, "Henry wouldn't do anything that wasn't cricket. Me, I was raised in a river ward and I'm not bothered by niceties. […]"

  2. 7
    A relatively small area of a roof constructed to divert water from a horizontal intersection of the roof with a chimney, wall, expansion joint, or other projection.
  3. 8
    leaping insect; male makes chirping noises by rubbing the forewings together wordnet
  4. 9
    A signalling device used by soldiers in hostile territory to identify themselves to a friendly in low visibility conditions.
  5. 10
    A variant of the game of darts. See Cricket (darts). uncountable
  6. 11
    An aural warning sound consisting of a continuously-repeating chime, designed to be difficult for pilots to ignore. slang
Verb
  1. 1
    To play the game of cricket. intransitive, rare

    "Judge: Your family is in destitute circumstances. How do you get your living? Bannerman: By cricketing, your Worship."

  2. 2
    play cricket wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
bingoboiler factoryboiler roombull-roarercandorcatcall

Example

More examples

"Just as Japanese boys play baseball, so English boys play cricket."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English creket, crykett, crykette, from Old French criket (with diminutive -et) from criquer (“to make a cracking sound; creak”), from Middle Dutch kricken (“to creak; crack”), from Proto-West Germanic *krakōn, from Proto-Germanic *krakōną, related to Middle English creken, criken (“to creak”), all ultimately of imitative origin. Compare Dutch kriek (“cricket”), Middle Dutch krikel, criekel, crekel (“cricket”) (with diminituve -el), Middle Low German krikel, krekel (“cricket”), German Kreckel (“cricket”). More at creak.

Etymology 2

Perhaps from a Flemish dialect of Dutch met de krik ketsen (“to chase a ball with a curved stick”).

Etymology 3

The etymology is unknown. A few similar words exist in Germanic languages, such as Norwegian krakk (“stool”).

Related phrases

French cricketItalian tree cricketJerusalem cricketKanga cricketKiwi cricketMormon cricketOtomí tree cricketTest cricketant cricketbackyard cricketbalm cricketbalm-cricket

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.