crotch

Etymology

Its origin is disputed: Barnhart, the American Heritage Dictionary, the Oxford Dictionary of English and the Shorter Oxford take it as partly a variant of crutch and partly inherited from Middle English croche (“crook, crosier”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} borrowed from Old Northern French croche (“shepherd's crook”), a variant or feminine form of croc (“hook”),^[3][7][4][8] from Old Norse krókr (“hook”).^[7][9][5] Etymonline derives the English word directly from the French one, and calls the Norse word obscure, perhaps related to the many Germanic words in “kr-” meaning bent or hooked.^[7] Hoad derives the French noun from the verb crocher, which is formed from the word for hook,^[9] and Weekley traces the French word to Vulgar Latin *croccus.^[8] Merriam-Webster, Collins and Dictionary.com see the word simply as a variant or alteration of crutch,^[10][11][12] while the OED, noting that it matches the French word in form but crutch in sense, calls its history obscure.^[13] The Anglo-Norman noun is recorded from the early 12th century for a hook, a crook, a bishop's crosier and a hooked weapon.^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

A fork, apparently the farm tool: 1539, in Richard Taverner's translation of Erasmus's Proverbs.^[13][3] Etymonline glosses the first use as a pitchfork, from the 1530s;^[7] Merriam-Webster dates its first sense, a forked prop, to 1563.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The early senses are all forks.^[13] In 1573 Thomas Tusser used the word for a forked stick that held a weed down while it was cut, for a forked stake or prop, for a forked peg to hang things on, and for the fork of a tree where it divides into two branches.^[13] The last is the sense Etymonline describes as any fork or forking from the 1570s.^[7] The meaning "the part of the body where the legs join" is recorded from before 1592, in Robert Greene.^[13][3][7] Bacon used it in 1622 for a dilemma, in a passage that Johnson quoted under the sense "a hook or fork".^[13][15] Later extensions are the fork of a road or river (1725), a small area at each corner of a billiard table (1889, in the Century Dictionary) and the part of trousers or underwear that covers the join of the legs (1877).^[13] Weekley labelled the word dialect and American,^[8] and the English Dialect Dictionary records it in East Anglia both for the fork of a tree or the junction of the thighs and for a crutch or a stilt.^[16] In American slang it has been used since the 1960s of erotic or pornographic material, as in crotch novel, and since the 1970s, offensively, of a woman.^[17]

Timeline

• 1539 – a fork, probably the farm tool (obsolete).^[13][3]
• 1573 – a forked stake used as a prop; the fork of a tree.^[13]
• before 1592 – the point where the legs join the body.^[13][3]
• 1622 – a dilemma, in Bacon (obsolete).^[13]
• 1725 – the fork of a road or river.^[13]
• 1877 – the part of trousers that covers the join of the legs.^[13]
• 1889 – a corner area of a billiard table.^[13]
• 1963 – slang, as an adjective, erotic or pornographic.^[17]

Meanings

Noun

1. The angle where the legs join the trunk of the human body; the groin, or the genitals.^[11][10][13]
2. The part of a pair of trousers, pants or underwear that covers this area: The jeans had torn at the crotch.^[11][13]
3. A fork or angle formed where two branches or limbs part, as in a tree: A squirrel sat in the crotch of the oak.^[10][11][13]
4. A pole or stake with a forked end, used as a prop; on a ship, a forked support for a boom or spars, also called a crutch.^[10][11][13]
5. (billiards) A small area at each corner of the table in the three-ball game.^[13]
6. (obsolete, 1539) A fork used on the farm or in the garden.^[13][6]

Verb

1. To give something a forked shape, or provide it with a crotch; to notch a log on opposite sides so that it can be gripped for hauling.^[10]

Word family

• crotched

Related words

• crutch
• crook
• crochet
• crosier

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
3. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ 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)
17. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com