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croak

noun
/kɹoʊk/US/kɹəʊk/UK

Etymology

From Middle English *croken, crouken, (also represented by craken > crake), back-formation from Old English crācettan (“to croak”) (also in derivative crǣcetung (“croaking”)), from Proto-Germanic *krēk-, from Proto-Indo-European *greh₂-g-, from *greh₂-k-, of onomatopoeic origin. See also Swedish kråka, German krächzen, Sanskrit गर्जति (garjati, “to growl”); also compare Latin grāculus (“jackdaw”), Serbo-Croatian grákati. More at crack, crake and craic.

  1. inherited from *gerh₂-✻
  2. inherited from *krēk-✻
  3. inherited from crācettan
  4. inherited from *croken✻

Definitions

  1. A faint, harsh sound made in the throat.

  2. The call of a frog or toad.

  3. The harsh call of various birds, such as the raven or corncrake, or other creatures.

  4. ›+ 8 more definitions

    1. To make a croak sound.

    2. To utter in a low, hoarse voice.

      • The raven himself is hoarse, / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan.
      • “I am so tired,” he croaked. “It’s ageing this nation in Tom Hanks in Castaway years.”

    3. To make its vocal sound.

    4. To die.

    5. To kill.

      • He'd seen my face, so I had to croak him.
      • "It was me. And I'm glad, damned glad, I didn't croak him. With this slick guy after me, it would be me for the chair."
      • If Wilton croaked the criminal he did a jolly good day's work, and there's an end of it.

    6. To complain

      To complain; especially, to grumble; to forebode evil; to utter complaints or forebodings habitually.

      • Marat […] croaks with such reasonableness.

    7. To abort the current program indicating a user or caller error.

      • The accessor croaks if it's not an appropriate object reference.

    8. A surname from Irish.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at croak. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01croak02raven03corvus04crow05croaking06croaks

A definitional loop anchored at croak. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

6 hops · closes at croak

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA