creak
/kɹiːk/
creak noun: the sound produced by anything that creaks; a creaking.
Noun
creak (plural creaks)
- The sound produced by anything that creaks; a creaking.
- I won't say that I didn't close my eyes for a minute through the whole night, but if I did sleep it was only as a watchdog sleeps. A whisper or a creak of a board would have found me alert.1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC
Verb
creak (third-person singular simple present creaks, present participle creaking, simple past and past participle creaked)
- To make a prolonged sharp grating or squeaking sound, as by the friction of hard substances.
- Then when the four ropes were arranged the coffin was placed upon them. He watched it descend; it seemed descending for ever. At last a thud was heard; the ropes creaked as they were drawn up.1856, Eleanor Marx-Aveling (translator), Gustave Flaubert (author), Madame Bovary, Part III, Chapter 10
- He heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back, and at the same moment he found the monkey's paw, and frantically breathed his third and last wish.1901, W. W. Jacobs, The Monkey's Paw
- Synonyms:
- moan
- To produce a creaking sound with.
- Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry.c. 1604–1605 (date written), William Shakespeare, “All’s Well, that Ends Well”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
- I miss the polished brass, the powerful black horses,
The drivers creaking the seats of the baroque hearses, […]1941, Theodore Roethke, “On the Road to Woodlawn”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC; republished in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, London: Faber and Faber […]...
- To suffer from strain or old age.
- Fascinating though this high-minded re-reading was, certain crucial joints of the play creaked a good deal under the strain.2002, Stanley Wells, Shakespeare Survey, volume 39, page 205
- The whole basis of feudalism, especially in the more intensively farmed champion arable landscapes of the Midlands, was starting to creak.2007, Francis Pryor, Britain in the Middle Ages: An Archaeological History, page 232
Proper noun capitalized: Creak
Creak
- A surname.
creak meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
creak in Hindi
- to make a prolonged sharp grating or squeaking sound
- चरमराना caramrānā
creak in Urdu
- چر چراہٹ, چر مراہٹ, سخت آواز, چر چرانا, چر مرانا
creak in Bengali
- কিড়মিড় শব্দ করা
creak in Malayalam
- കിറുകിറുക്കുക, കർക്കശ ശബ്ദം
More languagesFewer languages
- creak in Kannada
- ಕಿರುಗುಟ್ಟು
- creak in Arabic
- زَيَّقَ zayyaqa, صَرَّ ṣarra
Examples of creak in a sentence
- The old wooden floor creaked as he paced across the room.
- Ba hovers over a stove in the well-lit room, glancing when he hears the creak underfoot.
- Bill Skarsgard finally gets to creak and simper out his first line as It: “Here, take it.”
Synonyms of creak
Forms of creak
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | creaks |
| alternative form (obsolete) | crik |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | creaks |
| present participle | creaking |
| past participle | creaked |
| past | creaked |
Origin of creak
From Middle English creken, criken, metathesis of Old English cearcian (“to chatter, creak, crash, gnash”), from Proto-West Germanic *krakōn (“to crash, crack, creak”), from Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂- (“to make a sound, cry hoarsely”), ultimately of imitative origin. Compare also Old English crǣccettan, crācettan (“to croak”), Albanian grykë (“throat”). More at crack.
Words formed from creak
Words that rhyme with creak
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- leak
- seek
- bespeak
- pique
- tweak
- reek
- sleek
- geek
- peek
- squeak
- week
- wreak
- boutique
- clique
- creek
- forspeak
- gleek
- unique
- bleak
- cacique
- critique
- deke
- eek
- eke
- fleak
- on fleek
- respeak
- Tajik
- teak
- technique
- tongue-in-chic
- chic
- cleek
- desqueak
- leek
- malik
- meek
- midweek
- misspeak
- physique
- pratique
- shriek
- speke
- streek
- Zeke
- -speak
- Adam's Peak
- advertique
Questions about creak
- What does creak mean?
- Creak means the sound produced by anything that creaks; a creaking.
- What is creak in Hindi?
- Creak in Hindi is चरमराना (caramrānā). See Creak meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is creak?
- Creak can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce creak?
- Creak is pronounced /kɹiːk/.
- What is the plural of creak?
- The plural of creak is creaks.
Words near creak in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: creak (page history and authors); Creak (page history and authors); creak (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); creak (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); creak (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); creak (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-creak.wav.
Cite this entry: “creak.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/creak. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.