crook
/kɹʊk/ noun, verb, adjective, proper noun
Forms crooks crooking crooked crooker crookest
- noun A bend; turn; curve; curvature; a flexure. “She held the baby in the crook of her arm.”
- noun A bending of the knee; a genuflection.
- noun A bent or curved part; a curving piece or portion (of anything). “the crook of a cane”
- noun A person who steals, lies, cheats, or does other dishonest or illegal things; a criminal; a scoundrel, scofflaw, lawbreaker, rogue, or miscreant.
- noun (obsolete) A lock or curl of hair.
- noun (obsolete) A support beam consisting of a post with a cross-beam resting upon it; a bracket or truss consisting of a vertical piece, a horizontal piece, and a strut.
- noun A specialized staff with a semi-circular bend (a "hook") at one end used by shepherds to control their herds.
- noun A bishop's standard staff of office.
- verb (transitive) To bend, or form into a hook. “He crooked his finger toward me.”
- verb (intransitive) To become bent or hooked.
- verb To turn from the path of rectitude; to pervert; to misapply; to twist.
- adjective (Australia, New Zealand, slang) Bad, unsatisfactory, not up to standard. “That work you did on my car is crook, mate.”
- adjective (Australia, New Zealand, slang) Ill, sick. “I′m feeling a bit crook.”
- adjective (Australia, New Zealand, slang) Annoyed, angry; upset.
- proper noun A town (unparished) in County Durham, England (OS grid ref NZ1635).
- proper noun A village and civil parish (served by Crook and Winster Parish Council) in Westmorland and Furness, Cumbria, England, previously in South Lakeland district (OS grid ref SD4695).
- proper noun A statutory town in Logan County, Colorado, United States, named after George Crook.
- proper noun An unincorporated community in Osage County, Missouri, United States, so named because of a local merchant's business practices (thus being derived from crook (thief)).
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
criminal felon outlaw malefactor bend twist turn shepherd's crook curve
Etymology
From Middle English croke, crok, from Old English *crōc (“hook, bend, crook”), from Proto-West Germanic *krōk, from Proto-Germanic *krōkaz (“bend, hook”), from Proto-Indo-European *greg- (“tracery, basket, bend”).
Cognate with Dutch kreuk (“a bend, fold, wrinkle”), Middle Low German kroke, krake (“fold, wrinkle”), Danish krog (“crook, hook”), Swedish krok (“crook, hook”), Icelandic krókur (“hook”).
Compare typologically Czech křivák (< křivý < Proto-Slavic *krivъ, whence also *krivьda).
From Middle English crooken, croken, crokien, from Old English *crōcian, from Proto-West Germanic *krōkōn (“to bend, wrinkle”), from the noun (see above). Cognate with Dutch kreuken (“to crease, rumple”), German Low German kröken (“to bend, offend, suppress”).
From crooked (“dishonestly come by”).
* The English surname is derived from the noun crook (“bend, hook”).
* The places in Durham and Cumbria are of Brythonic origin, from crug (“hill, mound”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun A bend, turn, or curve; curvature; flexure.
- noun Any implement having a bent or crooked end. Especially: (a) The staff used by a shepherd, the hook of which serves to hold a runaway sheep. (b) A bishop's staff of office. Cf. Pastoral stafu.
- verb To turn from a straight line; to bend; to curve.
- verb To turn from the path of rectitude; to pervert; to misapply; to twist. [Archaic]
Etymology [OE. crok; akin to Icel. kr hook,bend, SW. krok, Dan. krog, OD. krooke; or cf. Gael. crecan crook, hook, W. crwca crooked. Cf. Crosier, Crotchet, Crutch, Encroach.]
Etymology [OE. croken; cf. Sw. kr, Dan. kr. See Crook, n.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “crook”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details