Crave

How to spell crave

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce crave

What does crave mean?

1. verbTo feel a powerful desire or longing for something.

Crave in a sentence

• After a long shift, many workers crave a quiet evening at home.

• Dieters often crave the very foods they are trying to avoid.

Where does crave come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English verb crafian, meaning 'to demand, beg for, or ask urgently'. In its earliest use it carried a legal or formal weight, describing a person who pressed an official request or petition rather than someone simply wanting a snack. Over the medieval period the sense softened from formal demand into an intense personal longing, and by the time of Early Modern English it had settled into the modern meaning of wanting something badly. It is closely related to words in the other North Sea Germanic languages, such as Old Norse krefja and Danish kræve, both also meaning 'to demand'. The clean four-letter spelling has stayed simple and stable, so the only real trap is remembering the silent final 'e' that signals the long 'a' sound.

How the word is built

• crave (from Old English crafian: to demand, beg for)