Word.ws English Dictionary

crik

crik is the obsolete spelling of creak.

crik is the pronunciation spelling of creek.

Meaning of creak

Verb

creak (third-person singular simple present creaks, present participle creaking, simple past and past participle creaked)

  1. (intransitive) 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
    Synonyms:
    moan
  2. (transitive) 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]...
  3. (figuratively, intransitive) 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

See all 5 meanings of creak

Meaning of creek

Noun

creek (plural creeks)

  1. (UK) A small inlet, often saltwater, leading to the sea or to the main channel of a river, especially a river estuary.
    • Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea.1853, John Ruskin, “Torcello”, in The Stones of Venice, volume II (The Sea-Stories), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, § I, page 11
  2. (UK) The inner part of a port that is used as a dock for small boats.
  3. (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, US) A stream of water, typically a stream of freshwater smaller than a river; in Australia, also used of river-sized bodies of water.
    • We all feel it Looming, even when we're awake, out there ahead someplace, the way you come to feel a River or Creek ahead, before anything else,— sound, sky, vegetation,— may have announced it.1997, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 67, in Mason & Dixon, 1st US edition, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, part Two: America, page 650
    Synonyms:
    run
  4. Any turn or winding.

See all 9 meanings of creek

Forms of crik

pluralcriks

Questions about crik

What is crik the obsolete spelling of?
Crik is the obsolete spelling of creak.

Words near crik in the dictionary

  1. Crigler-Najjar syndrome
  2. Criglers
  3. Crihfield
  4. Crihfields
  5. CRIII
  6. crik
  7. crike
  8. crikes
  9. crikey
  10. crikeycore
  11. criks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crik (page history and authors); creak (page history and authors); creek (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.

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