Crook

How to spell crook

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce crook

What does crook mean?

1. nounA person who is dishonest or who commits crimes, especially a swindler or thief.
2. nounA long staff with a curved or hooked end, traditionally used by a shepherd.
3. nounA bend or angle in something, such as the inner curve of the arm or a winding part of a path.

Crook in a sentence

• The landlord turned out to be a crook who pocketed every deposit.

• The shepherd leaned on his wooden crook as he counted the flock.

• She tucked the folder into the crook of her elbow while unlocking the door.

• Police finally caught the crook behind the insurance scam.

• The museum displayed a bishop's ornate gold crook from the cathedral.

• The cottage sat in the crook of the river where the water turned sharply.

Where does crook come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This word comes from the Old Norse krokr, which literally meant a 'hook' or a 'bent thing', and it entered English in the 1100s and 1200s during the long Scandinavian influence on northern English speech. The earliest sense was purely physical: a curved tool or a bend, which is why a shepherd still carries a crook with its hooked top and why we speak of the crook of the arm or the crook of a river. The same root gave us 'crooked', meaning bent and, by extension, dishonest, since something not straight was seen as morally twisted. From that figurative leap the slang noun 'crook', meaning a swindler or criminal, developed and became widespread in the 1800s. The short, blunt spelling with its double o stays close to the original Norse word, and the related 'crochet' and 'crotchet' trace back through French to the same idea of a little hook.

How the word is built

• crook (a single root from Old Norse krokr meaning 'hook' or 'bend')