crick

• IPA^(key): /kɹɪk/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪk

From Middle English crike, crikke (“muscular spasm of the neck”), attested since the 1400s.[1][2] Likely related to Old Norse kriki (“bend; nook”), whence also crick (“creek”) and creek.[1][2]

crick (plural cricks)

1. A painful muscular cramp or spasm of some part of the body, as of the neck or back, making it difficult to move the part affected.

   Coordinate term: catch

2. A small jackscrew.[3]

crick (third-person singular simple present cricks, present participle cricking, simple past and past participle cricked)

1. To develop a crick (cramp, spasm).
   • 2008, Jacqueline Signori, Ada, →ISBN, page 48:

     Stomach sleeping never worked for her because her neck cricked and pained in so short a time, that she never got the chance to fall asleep that way although the rest of her body snuggled well into the bed in that position.

   • 2014, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, I Remember You: A Ghost Story, Minotaur Books, →ISBN:

     “He's upstairs.” As soon as she said this, a loud knocking came from the crawl space below. Katrín was so startled that her neck cricked painfully as she looked down. Adrenalin rushed through her veins and the pain in her fingers disappeared.

2. To cause to develop a crick; to create a crick in.
   • 2013, K. J. Parker, Pattern, Orbit, →ISBN:

     He'd fallen asleep after all (and he'd done it in such a way as to crick his neck and his back and put his right arm to sleep; hardly a good start to a busy day) and now daylight was seeping through the bald patches in the thatch, ...

3. To twist, bend, or contort, especially in a way that produces strain.
   • 2011, Camy Tang, Protection for Hire: A Novel, Zondervan, →ISBN:

     He stopped a few feet from her, probably because he'd have to crick his neck to glare at her and that would just be embarrassing for him. “Dealing with garbage suits you.”

   • 2012, Doug Johnstone, Hit and Run, Faber & Faber, →ISBN:

     The throbbing pain that even now was coursing through his neck and shoulders, making him crick his neck.

   • 2015, Emma Miller, A Match for Addy, Harlequin, →ISBN, page 121:

     Addy was tall for a woman, and he liked that because he didn't have to crick his neck ...

   • 2018, Tim Major, Machineries of Mercy, ChiZine Publications, →ISBN:

     Now she was able to stand on her feet, so long as she kept her neck cricked.

See creek.

crick (plural cricks)

1. (Appalachia, Ottawa Valley) Alternative form of creek

See creak.

crick (plural cricks)

1. The creaking of a door, or a noise resembling it.