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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

crook.

A bend; turn; curve; curvature; a flexure.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/kɹʊk/Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation[kɹ̠̊˔ʷʊk]Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/kɹɵk/British, Southern, Standard[kɹ̠̊˔ʷɵk] ~ [kɹ̠̊˔ʷɘk]British, Southern, Standard

  1. A bend; turn; curve; curvature; a flexure.

    She held the baby in the crook of her arm.

  2. A bending of the knee; a genuflection.

  3. A bent or curved part; a curving piece or portion (of anything).

    the crook of a cane

  4. A person who steals, lies, cheats, or does other dishonest or illegal things; a criminal; a scoundrel, scofflaw, lawbreaker, rogue, or miscreant.

  5. A lock or curl of hair.

    obsolete

  6. 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.

    obsolete

  7. A specialized staff with a semi-circular bend (a "hook") at one end used by shepherds to control their herds.

  8. A bishop's standard staff of office.

  9. An artifice; a trick; a contrivance.

  10. A pothook.

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

Where this word comes from

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).

verb/kɹʊk/Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation[kɹ̠̊˔ʷʊk]Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/kɹɵk/British, Southern, Standard[kɹ̠̊˔ʷɵk] ~ [kɹ̠̊˔ʷɘk]British, Southern, Standard

  1. To bend, or form into a hook.

    transitive
    He crooked his finger toward me.

  2. To become bent or hooked.

    intransitive

  3. To turn from the path of rectitude; to pervert; to misapply; to twist.

Where this word comes from

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”).

adj/kɹʊk/Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation[kɹ̠̊˔ʷʊk]Australia, General-American, Received-Pronunciation/kɹɵk/British, Southern, Standard[kɹ̠̊˔ʷɵk] ~ [kɹ̠̊˔ʷɘk]British, Southern, Standard

  1. Bad, unsatisfactory, not up to standard.

    Australia · New-Zealand · slang
    That work you did on my car is crook, mate.
    Not turning up for training was pretty crook.

  2. Ill, sick.

    Australia · New-Zealand · slang
    I′m feeling a bit crook.

  3. Annoyed, angry; upset.

    Australia · New-Zealand · slang
Where this word comes from

From crooked (“dishonestly come by”).

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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.