CROOK • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Crook

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/krʊk/ Listen

noun

crook n.

1.

A bend, turn, or curve; curvature; flexure. "Through lanes, and crooks, and darkness."

2.

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 staff. "He left his crook, he left his flocks."

3.

A pothook. "As black as the crook."

4.

An artifice; trick; tricky device; subterfuge. "For all yuor brags, hooks, and crooks."

5.

(Mus.) A small tube, usually curved, applied to a trumpet, horn, etc., to change its pitch or key.

6.

A person given to fraudulent practices; an accomplice of thieves, forgers, etc. (Cant, U.S.)

By hook or by crook, in some way or other; by fair means or foul.

verb

Crook v. t. (past & past part. crooked; pres. part. crooking)

1.

To turn from a straight line; to bend; to curve. "Crook the pregnant hinges of the knee."

2.

To turn from the path of rectitude; to pervert; to misapply; to twist. (Archaic) "There is no one thing that crooks youth more than such unlawfull games." "What soever affairs pass such a man's hands, he crooketh them to his own ends."

Crook v. i. To bend; to curve; to wind; to have a curvature. " The port... crooketh like a bow." "Their shoes and pattens are snouted, and piked more than a finger long, crooking upwards."

See images of 'Crook'

Etymology of 'Crook'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Crook" Quotes from Famous Books

... made, but that after two or three days of the sham fights, such as took place to-day, the troops will quietly return into Paris. The object of General Trochu is, they say, to amuse the Parisians, and if he can by hook or by crook get the National Guard under the mildest of fires, to celebrate their heroism, in order that they may return the compliment. I cannot, however, believe that no attempt will be made to fight a battle; the troops are now massed from St. Denis to the Marne; within two hours they ...

— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... he stands to look Across the hills where the clouds swoon, He singing, leans upon his crook, He sings, he sings no more. The wind is muffled in the tangled hairs Of sheep that drift along the noon. One mild sheep stares With amber eyes about the pearl-flecked June. Two skylarks soar With singing flame Into the sun whence first they came. All else ...

— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... few spoonsful of very ordinary bouillon, akin to that which you might grab at the quick lunch, but which has been treated by the admixture of a chemical. This tube begins in a bulb which holds the fluid and terminates in an upturned crook sealed at the end. Into this interesting little piece of apparatus, the chemist pours a small quantity of the city drinking water, and he then puts the whole into an incubator where it is kept at a temperature favorable to the reactions which ...

— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... the same time, the spirit of freedom was already learning its appropriate language. It already claimed boldly the natural right of mankind to be governed according to the laws of reason and of divine justice. If a prince were a shepherd, it was at least lawful to deprive him of his crook when he butchered the flock which he had ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Nares replied, "but for the steam-crusher. It'll all tally as neat as a patent puzzle, if you leave out the way these people bid the wreck up. And there we come to a stone wall. But whatever it is, Mr. Dodd, it's on the crook." ...

— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

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