Craft

How to spell craft

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce craft

What does craft mean?

1. nounSkill in making things by hand, or a trade or occupation requiring such skill.
2. verbTo make or shape something with skill and careful attention.
3. nounA boat, ship, or aircraft, especially a small one.

Craft in a sentence

• noun

  She spent years perfecting the craft of bookbinding.

• verb

  The lawyers worked late to craft a watertight contract.

• noun

  A small fishing craft bobbed gently in the harbour.

• noun

  The workshop teaches the craft of joinery to local apprentices.

• verb

  She will craft each ring by hand from recycled silver.

• noun

  The rescue team launched a fast craft to reach the swimmers.

Where does craft come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Craft descends from the Old English word cræft, which carried a striking range of meanings: physical strength and power, but also skill, cunning, and an art or trade practised with the hands. It is a thoroughly Germanic word, with close cousins in Old High German kraft and modern German Kraft, where the sense of 'force' or 'strength' still dominates. In English the meaning narrowed over the centuries from raw power toward the idea of acquired skill, so that by the medieval period a 'craft' chiefly meant a trade or occupation requiring trained ability, as preserved in the old guild names and in 'handicraft'. The sense of a boat or vessel is a much later and rather mysterious development, recorded from the 1600s, possibly a shortening of an older phrase about 'vessels of small craft', meaning small skill or small trade. The flavour of cunning also survived, which is why 'crafty' came to mean sly rather than merely skilful. The spelling is mercifully phonetic, but the older cræft is a reminder that the f sound here was never a 'ph'.

How the word is built

• craft (Old English cræft: strength, skill, art); no affixes, a native root word

Words that sound like craft

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• kraft: A tough brown paper or board made by the sulphate pulping process, used for wrapping, packaging, and sacks.