Crow

How to spell crow

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce crow

What does crow mean?

1. nounA large, glossy black bird known for its harsh call and notable intelligence.
2. verbTo make the loud cry of a cockerel, or to boast loudly about a success.

Crow in a sentence

• noun

  A single crow perched on the telephone wire above the field.

• verb

  The rooster will crow at first light every morning.

• noun

  The farmer hung shiny tape to scare every crow away from the seed.

• verb

  He loves to crow about his winnings whenever the team gathers.

Where does crow come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the Old English crawe, the name of the black bird, and it is closely tied to the verb crawan, meaning 'to crow' or 'to cry out'. Both forms are imitative in origin, coined to echo the harsh, grating call the bird actually makes, a pattern shared with Germanic relatives such as the Dutch kraai and the German Krahe. The same imitative instinct gave English the verb, used first for the loud cry of a cockerel at dawn and later, by a natural figurative leap, for a person boasting loudly in triumph. Because the spelling preserves the old 'ow' that once represented the long vowel, the word looks simple yet sometimes gets muddled with similar 'ow' words. The bird's reputation for cleverness and its glossy black plumage have kept it vivid in everyday speech for well over a thousand years.

How the word is built

• crow (whole word; from Old English crawe, an imitative root echoing the bird's harsh call)