crick

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English crike, also crikke and cryk,^[2][3][4][5] first recorded about 1424.^[6][4] Its origin is uncertain.^{[6][7][4][8][9][10]} The OED takes it as probably imitative, expressing the clicking sound the neck makes as the spasm comes on,^[6] and Barnhart likewise suggests that it imitates the sudden check of a muscle.^[4] The OED also compares stitch, crook and a Scots term for lumbago, “cleek-i’-the-back”, and thinks a connection with creek less likely.^[6] The Middle English Dictionary, however, compares the Middle English word for a creek and Scandinavian words meaning "corner, bend",^[2][7] such as Old Norse kriki (“nook, bend”).^[2] Partridge thought it probably a thinned form of creak,^[11] Skeat allied it to crinkle,^[12] and Weekley thought it probably related to crook, comparing French torticolis and Italian torcicollo, literally "twist-neck".^[13] The verb was formed from the noun and is first recorded in 1850.^[6][14][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A painful stiffness of the neck or back from a muscle spasm: about 1424, in a letter among the Stonor papers, whose writer hopes to come "If I may ride for þe crikke".^[6][2]

Semantic evolution

In 1440 the Promptorium Parvulorum glossed crykke as a sickness, the cramp or Latin spasmus;^[2][15] the Middle English Dictionary thinks it may also have meant tetanus.^[2] From 1566, in Blundeville's book on the diseases of horses, it was used of a stiffness in a horse's neck or back.^[6] Johnson (1755) defined it as "a painful stiffness in the neck".^[16] The verb, to give oneself a crick by twisting the neck or back, followed in 1850,^[6][3] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged adds the sense of turning the head into a strained position.^[3] In 19th-century dialect, from Scotland and Ireland to Cornwall, the noun was in general colloquial use, and figuratively meant a twist in the mind, a fad or an unreasonable idea.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1424 – a sudden painful stiffness of the neck or back.^[6][2][4]
• 1566 – a stiffness or spasm in a horse's neck or back.^[6]
• 1850 – verb, to twist or strain the neck or back so as to cause a crick.^[6][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A painful spasm or cramp of the muscles, especially of the neck or back, that makes it stiff: After the long flight he woke with a crick in his neck.^[10][3][6]
2. A similar stiffness or spasm in a horse's neck or back.^[6]

Verb

1. To cause a crick in the neck or back; to wrench: She cricked her back lifting the boxes.^[10][3][6]
2. To twist the head or neck into a strained position.^[3]

Related words

• creek
• creak
• crinkle

Usage notes

Collins labels the word informal.^[10] In dialect crick is also a form of creek, a small stream, recorded from 1608 in J. Smith's “True Relation” of events in Virginia;^[6][3][18] Etymonline finds the form in the early 13th century,^[7] and the Dictionary of American Regional English records the pronunciation especially in the Inland North, the North Midland and the West.^[18] Some American speakers in turn say creek for a crick in the neck or back, which that dictionary takes as perhaps a hypercorrection.^[18] The OED and Merriam-Webster Unabridged also record an imitative verb crick, to make a thin, sharp sound like a cricket's (from 1601), and a noun crick, a small jackscrew, from French cric (from 1775).^[6][3] Wright's dialect dictionary has further nouns crick: a crevice or nook in Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire, East Anglia and Dorset, and coarse earthenware in Worcestershire and Shropshire.^[17]

References

1. ^ 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. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ a b 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)
18. ^ a b c Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press