Croup
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The top of the rump of a horse or other quadruped.
"So light to the croup the fair lady he swung, / So light to the saddle before her he sprung."
- 2 An infectious illness of the larynx, especially in young children, causing respiratory difficulty. uncountable
- 3 the part of an animal that corresponds to the human buttocks wordnet
- 4 a disease of infants and young children; harsh coughing and hoarseness and fever and difficult breathing wordnet
- 1 To croak, make a hoarse noise. dialectal, obsolete
Example
More examples"Tom and Mary's baby had a severe bout of croup, and had to be put in a humidicrib in hospital."
Etymology
From Middle English croupe, from Old French croupe (“rump, body”), from Old Norse kroppr (“body, trunk, mass”), from Proto-Germanic *kruppaz (“body, mass, heap, collection, crop”), from Proto-Indo-European *grewb- (“to curve, bend, crawl”). More at crupper, doublet of croupe, group, and crop.
From Scots croup, croop (“the croup”), from Scots croup, crowp, croop (“to croak, speak hoarsely, murmur, complain”), from Old Scots crowp, crope, croap (“to call loudly, croak”), alteration of rowp, roup, roip, rope (“to cry, cry hoarsely, roop”), from Middle English roupen, ropen, from Old English hrōpan (“to shout, proclaim; cry out, scream, howl”), from Proto-Germanic *hrōpaną (“to shout”), from Proto-Indo-European *ker-, *kor- (“to caw, crow”). More at roop.
Related phrases
More for "croup"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.