croak

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See also: Croak

English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

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

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

croak (plural croaks)

  1. A faint, harsh sound made in the throat.
  2. The call of a frog or toad. (see also ribbit)
  3. The harsh call of various birds, such as the raven or corncrake, or other creatures.

Translations[edit]

the harsh sound of various birds, particularly the raven or crow — see caw

Verb[edit]

croak (third-person singular simple present croaks, present participle croaking, simple past and past participle croaked)

  1. (intransitive) To make a croak.
  2. (transitive) To utter in a low, hoarse voice.
  3. (intransitive, of a frog, toad, raven, or various other birds or animals) To make its sound.
  4. (slang) To die.
  5. (transitive, slang) To kill someone or something.
    He'd seen my face, so I had to croak him.
    • 1920 June, The Electrical Experimenter, New York, page 216, column 2:
      "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."
    • 1925, G. K. Chesterton, The Arrow of Heaven (first published in Nash's Pall Mall Magazine, Jul 1925)
      If Wilton croaked the criminal he did a jolly good day's work, and there's an end of it.
  6. To complain; especially, to grumble; to forebode evil; to utter complaints or forebodings habitually.
  7. (programming slang, Perl) To abort the current program indicating a user or caller error.
    • 2002, Nathan Patwardhan, Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour, Perl, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 200:
      The accessor croaks if it's not an appropriate object reference.

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

of a raven, to make its sound — see caw
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