Word.ws English Dictionary

crouch

/ˈkɹɐʊ̯t͡ʃ//ˈkɹaʊ̯t͡ʃ/

crouch verb: to bend down; to stoop low; to stand close to the ground with legs bent, like an animal when waiting for prey, or someone in fear.

crouch: to bend down; to stoop low; to stand close to the ground with legs bent, like an animal when...
Image: shakko, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb (1)

crouch (third-person singular simple present crouches, present participle crouching, simple past and past participle crouched)

  1. (intransitive) To bend down; to stoop low; to stand close to the ground with legs bent, like an animal when waiting for prey, or someone in fear.
    • We crouched behind the low wall until the squad of soldiers had passed by.
    • Archer and Jacob jumped up from behind the mound where they had been crouching with the intention of springing upon their mother unexpectedly, and they all began to walk slowly home.1922, Virginia Woolf, chapter 2, in Jacob's Room
    Synonyms:
    huddle
  2. (intransitive) To bend servilely; to bow in reverence or humility.
    • kings ſhall crouch vnto our conquering ſwords,
      And hoſtes of Souldiers ſtand amazd at vs,
      When with their fearfull tongues they ſhall confeſſe
      Theſe are the men that al the world admires,c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
    • Must I stand and crouch
      Under your testy humour?1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

Noun (1)

crouch (plural crouches)

  1. A bent or stooped position.
    • The cat waited in a crouch, hidden behind the hedge.

Noun (2)

crouch (plural crouches)

  1. (obsolete) A cross.

Verb (2)

crouch (third-person singular simple present crouches, present participle crouching, simple past and past participle crouched)

  1. (obsolete) To sign with the cross; bless.

Proper noun capitalized: Crouch

Crouch

  1. A surname.
  2. A ghost town in California.
  3. A city and town in Idaho.
  4. A short tidal river in Essex, England.

crouch meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

crouch in Tamil

கூனிக் குறுகு

crouch in Urdu

زمین پر بیٹھنا

crouch in Bengali

উবু হয়ে বসা, কুঁকড়ে যাওয়া

crouch in Malayalam

പേടികൊണ്ടോ ഒളിക്കാൻ വേണ്ടിയോ കുനിയുക, കുമ്പിടുക, കുതിച്ചുചാടാനായി കിടക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
crouch in Kannada
ಕುನಿದಿರು, ತಗ್ಗಿಬಗ್ಗಿ ನಿಲ್ಲು, ಬಾಗಿ ನಿಲ್ಲು, ಮುದುಡಿಕೊಳ್ಳು
crouch in Persian
دولا شدن dollâ šodan
crouch in Vietnamese
né, núp, cúi

Examples of crouch in a sentence

  • In my darkened bedroom as a child, a trick of the light made my chair look like a crouching monster.
  • As of the current patch, Luke’s crouching Medium Punch has been nerfed.
  • Bekiaa shouted at Bele, crouching under the vooping warble of returning musket fire.

All 40 example sentences with crouch

Synonyms of crouch

Forms of crouch

Verb
third-person singular presentcrouches
present participlecrouching
past participlecrouched
pastcrouched
Noun
pluralcrouches

Past tense of crouch: crouched

Origin of crouch

From Middle English crouchen (“to bend, crouch”), variant of croken (“to bend, crook”), from crok (“crook, hook”), from Old Norse krókr (“hook”), from Proto-Germanic *krōkaz (“hook”), from Proto-Indo-European *gerg- (“wicker, bend”), from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to turn, wind, weave”). Compare Middle Dutch krōken (“to crook, curl”). More at crook.

From Middle English crouche, cruche, from Old English crūċ (“cross”). Compare Old Saxon krūci (“cross”), Old High German krūzi (“cross”). Doublet of cross and crux.

Words formed from crouch

Words that rhyme with crouch

Questions about crouch

What does crouch mean?
Crouch means to bend down; to stoop low; to stand close to the ground with legs bent, like an animal when waiting for prey, or someone in fear.
What is crouch in Tamil?
Crouch in Tamil is கூனிக் குறுகு. See Crouch meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is crouch?
Crouch can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce crouch?
Crouch is pronounced /ˈkɹaʊ̯t͡ʃ/ (UK).
What is the past tense of crouch?
The past tense of crouch is crouched.

Words near crouch in the dictionary

  1. crotylborations
  2. crotylglycine
  3. crotylglycines
  4. crotyls
  5. crotylsarin
  6. crouch
  7. Crouch End
  8. crouch ware
  9. crouchant
  10. crouched
  11. croucher

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crouch (page history and authors); Crouch (page history and authors); crouch (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); crouch (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); crouch (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); crouch (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); crouch (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Mélange a trois-crouch.wav.

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