Cricket
nounA team game played with a bat and ball on a grass pitch, especially popular in England, Australia, and South Asia.
How to spell cricket
7 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce cricket
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does cricket mean?
- nounA team game played with a bat and ball on a grass pitch, especially popular in England, Australia, and South Asia.
- nounA small jumping insect related to the grasshopper, known for the chirping noise the male produces by rubbing its wings.
Cricket in a sentence
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The village club plays cricket every Saturday in summer.
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A cricket chirped loudly in the corner of the warm kitchen.
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He captained the national cricket team for six seasons.
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She found a cricket hiding behind the bookshelf at night.
Where does cricket come from?
Language of origin: French
The insect name arrived in English in the 1300s from the Old French criquet, which came from the verb criquer, meaning 'to creak' or 'to crackle'. That verb was imitative, an echo of the small clicking, chirping noise the insect makes by rubbing its wings, so the creature was quite literally named after its sound. The sporting sense, recorded from the 1500s, is more debated: many scholars connect it to the Middle Dutch cricke or cricc, meaning a stick or staff, which would fit a game played by striking a ball with a wooden bat. Both threads feed into a single spelling that has stayed remarkably stable, helped by the tidy diminutive ending -et that English readers recognise from words like 'pocket' and 'packet'. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, the spelling rarely causes trouble.
How the word is built
- crick (imitative of a creaking, chirping sound)
- -et (diminutive suffix)
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