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Etymology and origin of the English word crag

Pronunciation

  • /ˈkɹæɡ/[1]
  • US: /ˈkɹeɪɡ/[1]

crag1 steep rock

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1325 before 1325, Cursor Mundi
Borrowed from
Celtic via Middle English

Etymology

The word for the rock is inherited from Middle English crag,[2][3] borrowed from a Celtic language.[4][5][6][7][8] Dictionaries compare Old Irish crec (“rock”) and carrac (“cliff”),[6][5] Welsh craig (“rock, stone”),[6][4][9] Scottish Gaelic creag,[4][9] Manx creg,[4][6] and Breton krag.[6] The OED points out that none of these gives the English form exactly: the English word, also cragg, is already found in northern dialect before 1300 and seems to be old in the local names of northern England and the Scottish Lowlands, and Scots craig is apparently a later development from crag.[4] Hoad accordingly proposes *crag, an Old British form from *krako-, rather than the *krakjo- behind the Irish, Gaelic and Welsh words.[7] The OED adds that the Celtic words themselves are obscurely related, Welsh also having carreg (“a stone”) and Irish carruig, anglicized as carrick.[4] Merriam-Webster Unabridged suggests a remote link with hard,[8] and Wiktionary a contraction of Middle Irish carrac.[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A steep rugged rock: before 1325, in Cursor Mundi, after the place name Cragdal (1218).[5] The OED and the Middle English Dictionary first quote the common noun from William of Palerne, before 1375, where a werewolf crouches "vnder a kragge".[4][2] Hoad and Collins date it to the 13th century,[7][10] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged to the 14th.[8]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the word covered a cliff, a mountain peak, a sea cliff or headland, and a projecting point of rock.[2] Chaucer has it once,[11] and the adjective craggy followed about 1400.[5] From about 1400 it could also mean a rough piece of rock, detached or projecting,[4] and a curling stone was so called from 1789.[4] Johnson (1755) quoted Gibson's Camden for the word as a British one still used in the northern counties.[12] In the north it remained a living dialect word, with compounds such as crag-fast, of a sheep stranded on a ledge, in Cumberland and Westmorland, and in Shetland the plural craigs meant rock-fishing.[13] From 1735 the word was also used in East Anglia for deposits of shelly sand, used as manure,[4][13] a use that the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English think may have been a different word originally.[14][15] From it came the verb, to manure land with crag, in 1771.[4] Geologists adopted crag and tail in 1815,[4] and a cragsman, a climber of sea cliffs after birds' eggs, is recorded in the same year.[6]

Timeline

  • 1218 – in the place name Cragdal.[5] Etymonline has place-name use from about 1200.[6]
  • before 1325 – a steep rugged rock, in Cursor Mundi.[5]
  • c. 1400 – a rough piece of rock, detached or projecting, in Mandeville's Travels.[4]
  • c. 1484 – rock as a material.[4]
  • 1735 – deposits of shelly sand in East Anglia.[4]
  • 1771 – verb, to manure land with crag.[4]
  • 1789 – a curling stone.[4]
  • 1815 – crag and tail, in geology.[4]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A steep rugged rock or cliff: Ravens nested on the crag above the valley.[10][8][4]
  2. (archaic) A rough piece of rock, detached or projecting.[8][4]
  3. (geology) A deposit of shelly sand in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex; the Pliocene strata it belongs to.[8][4][10]

Verb

  1. To apply crag to land as a fertilizer.[4]

Word family

  • cragged
  • craglike
  • craggy
  • cragsman

crag2 neck, throat

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
1469 Ordinances of the Household of Clarence
Borrowed from
Middle Dutch crāghe via Middle English

Etymology

The word for the neck is inherited from Middle English cragge, also crag and crage,[2][8][16] borrowed from Middle Dutch crāghe (“neck, throat”).[2][8][16][9] The Shorter Oxford more cautiously says probably from Low Dutch.[14] The OED notes that it corresponds to Dutch kraag, German Kragen, Middle High German krage and, in the sense "collar", to Icelandic kragi and Swedish krage.[4] It takes the Norse words to be from German, finds the absence of the word from the earlier stages of the languages notable, and thinks the English word probably from some Low German source, since an Old English *craga could only have given craw.[4] Wiktionary calls it a variant of that word.[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

A neck of an animal, as a joint of mutton or veal: 1469, in the Ordinances of the household of Clarence.[4][2] The neck of a person is recorded from 1488, in Hary's Wallace, composed about 1478.[4] The OED says the word was in Scots from the 14th century,[4] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged also gives the 14th century,[8] while Dictionary.com has 1425–75.[16]

Semantic evolution

The word was chiefly Scots and northern.[4][14] Skelton could use it to mock a Scot in 1523–24, and in The Changeling (1622) the devil puts "the rope about her crag"; slang dictionaries kept it into the 19th century.[17] The canting dictionaries from 1725 also give it for the stomach or womb.[17] Johnson (1755) gave both the neck, with a quotation from Spenser, and the small end of a neck of mutton, which he called a low word.[12] Throat appears in 1773,[4][14] and the East Anglian sense "crop of a bird" before 1825.[4] The mutton sense died in the 18th century.[4][14] In the 19th century craig was still the neck in Scots and in northern English dialect, in Scott and Stevenson among others.[13] The OED thinks scrag a perversion of the mutton sense.[4]

Timeline

  • 1469 – a neck of mutton or veal (obsolete after 1767).[4][2]
  • 1488 – the neck of a person.[4]
  • 1725 – the stomach or womb, in cant.[17]
  • 1773 – the throat.[4]
  • before 1825 – the crop of a bird, in East Anglian dialect.[4]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (Scottish and northern English) The neck.[8][4][14][16]
  2. (Scottish and northern English) The throat.[8][4][14]
  3. (dialect) The craw of a bird.[4][16]
  4. (obsolete, 1469–1767) A neck of mutton or veal.[4][14][12]
  • craw
  • scrag

Usage notes

The OED also records crag, a thin bony person, once in 1542, as a variant of scrag.[4] Wright's dialect dictionary has unconnected local words spelled the same way: a slit in West Yorkshire, a large quantity in Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, and to crack by bending in Lincolnshire.[13]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  3. ^ Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  7. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  9. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  10. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  11. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
  12. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  13. ^ a b c d Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  15. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  16. ^ a b c d e Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  17. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com

Related etymologies

  • tor · also from Celtic
  • rattle · also from Middle Dutch
  • nip · also from Middle Dutch
  • pip · also from Middle Dutch
  • puke · also from Middle Dutch
  • splinter · also from Middle Dutch
  • knack · also from Middle Dutch
  • excise · also from Middle Dutch
Cite this entry

“Crag.” Etymologically, 6 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/crag. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·