cricket
/ˈkɹɪkɪt/ noun, verb
Forms crickets cricketing cricketed crecket cracket
- noun 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.
- noun (US, slang, humorous, in the plural) In the form crickets: absolute silence; no communication.
- noun A signalling device used by soldiers in hostile territory to identify themselves to a friendly in low visibility conditions.
- noun (aviation, slang) An aural warning sound consisting of a continuously-repeating chime, designed to be difficult for pilots to ignore.
- noun (sports) A game played outdoors with bats and a ball between two teams of eleven, popular in England and many Commonwealth countries.
- noun (chiefly UK, chiefly in the negative) An act that is fair and sportsmanlike.
- noun A variant of the game of darts. See Cricket (darts).
- verb (rare, intransitive) To play the game of cricket.
- noun (dialectal) A wooden footstool.
- noun 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.
Antonyms
Etymology
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, 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.
Perhaps from a Flemish dialect of Dutch met de krik ketsen (“to chase a ball with a curved stick”).
The etymology is unknown. A few similar words exist in Germanic languages, such as Norwegian krakk (“stool”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun An orthopterous insect of the genus Gryllus, and allied genera.
- noun A low stool.
- noun A game much played in England, and sometimes in America, with a ball, bats, and wickets, the players being arranged in two contesting parties or sides.
- verb To play at cricket. Tennyson.
Etymology [OE. criket, OF. crequet, criquet; prob. of German origin, and akin to E. creak; cf. D. kriek a cricket. See Creak.]
Etymology [AS. cricc, crycc, crooked staff, crutch. Perh. first used in sense 1, a stool prob. having been first used as a wicket. See Crutch.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “cricket”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details