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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

croak.

A faint, harsh sound made in the throat.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/kɹoʊk/General-American/kɹəʊk/Received-Pronunciation

  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.

Where this word comes from

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.

verb/kɹoʊk/General-American/kɹəʊk/Received-Pronunciation

  1. To make a croak sound.

    intransitive

  2. To utter in a low, hoarse voice.

    transitive

  3. To make its vocal sound.

    intransitive

  4. To die.

    intransitive · slang

  5. To kill.

    slang · transitive
    He'd seen my face, so I had to croak him.

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

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

    slang
Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.