crake

/ˈkɹeɪk/

crake noun: any of several birds of the family Rallidae that have short bills.

Image: Tisha Mukherjee, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

crake (plural crakes)

Any of several birds of the family Rallidae that have short bills.

Verb (1)

crake (third-person singular simple present crakes, present participle craking, simple past and past participle craked)

To cry out harshly and loudly, like a crake.
- How still ! how very still it is, So silent it appears, E'en from its intensity, To tingle in mine ears. I hear the sheep-bell far away In the calm breathless night; The corncrake begins to crake . Crake, crake, with all its might.1854 October, “MIDNIGHT IN JULY”, in The Kerry Magazine: A Monthly Journal of Antiquities, Polite Literature, Poetry, volume 1, number 10, page 159
- 'How very disagreeable!' said Annie; 'perhaps the birds took it in turn to crake.'1872, Bertha E. Wright, Marvels from nature; or, A second visit to aunt Bessie, page 175

Verb (2)

crake (third-person singular simple present crakes, present participle craking, simple past and past participle craked)

(obsolete) To boast; to speak loudly and boastfully.
- I hyred the to fyght agaynste Alexander, and not to crake and prate.1526, The Hundred Merry Tales; Or, Shakespeare's Jest Book
- Each man may crake of that which was his own.1559, The Mirror for Magistrates

Noun (2)

crake (plural crakes)

(obsolete) A crack; a boast.

Noun (3) capitalized: Crake

Crake

Alternative letter-case form of crake.

Examples of crake in a sentence

With him I threatned to be quite, and great things did I crake.1600, Phaer's Virgil:
And he that thus doth shal have smal pleasure in his awn rightwysnes, nor no gret lust to crake of his awn deserts or meryts.1721, John Strype, Ecclesiastical memorials:

Forms of crake

Noun
plural	crakes
alternative form	Crake
Verb
third-person singular present	crakes
present participle	craking
past participle	craked
past	craked

Origin of crake

From Middle English crak, crake, from Old Norse kráka (“crow”), from Proto-Germanic *krak-, *kra- (“to croak, caw”), from Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂-, itself onomatopoeic.

From Middle English craken, from Old English cracian, from Proto-West Germanic *krakōn. Cognate with Saterland Frisian kroakje, West Frisian kreakje, Dutch kraken, Low German kraken, French craquer (< Germanic), German krachen.

Words formed from crake

Phrases with crake

spotless crake

Words that rhyme with crake

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about crake

What does crake mean?: Crake means any of several birds of the family Rallidae that have short bills.
How do you use crake in a sentence?: With him I threatned to be quite, and great things did I crake.
What part of speech is crake?: Crake can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce crake?: Crake is pronounced /ˈkɹeɪk/.
What is the plural of crake?: The plural of crake is crakes.

Words near crake in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: crake (page history and authors); Crake (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-crake.wav.

Cite this entry: “crake.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crake. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.