Cradle

How to spell cradle

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cradle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cradle mean?

1. nounA small bed or cot for a baby, often built to rock gently.
2. verbTo hold something gently and protectively, as if supporting a baby.
3. nounA framework or rest that holds and supports an object such as a phone, ship, or tool.

Cradle in a sentence

• noun

  The newborn slept soundly in a wooden cradle by the window.

• verb

  She would cradle the injured bird in her cupped hands.

• noun

  The old phone rested in its cradle on the hall table.

• noun

  They painted the old family cradle before the baby arrived.

• verb

  He learned to cradle the violin against his shoulder.

• noun

  The ship sat in a steel cradle while workers repaired the hull.

Where does cradle come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends directly from the Old English cradol, which named the small swinging bed in which a baby was rocked. It belongs to the native Germanic layer of English and has close cousins in the older German kratto and related words for a basket or woven container, hinting that the earliest cradles may have been baskets. From the literal meaning of an infant's bed, the sense broadened over the centuries to cover any supporting frame that holds something securely, such as the rest a telephone handset sits in or the structure that holds a ship in dock. The verb sense, to hold something gently as if it were a baby, grew naturally out of the noun. The spelling has stayed remarkably stable, but the silent rocking of the unstressed second syllable, written -dle rather than -del, is the only small trap for a writer.

How the word is built

• cradle (from Old English cradol, a baby's bed); the -le ending is part of the inherited root, not a separate suffix