Meaning of Crock | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A stoneware or earthenware jar or storage container.
2. The loose black particles collected from combustion, as on pots and kettles, or in a chimney; soot; smut.
   uncountable
3. A surname.
4. A piece of broken pottery, a shard.
5. Colouring matter that rubs off from cloth.
   uncountable
6. A person who is physically limited by age, illness or injury.
   UK
7. An old or broken-down vehicle (and formerly a horse or ewe).
   UK
8. Silly talk, a foolish belief, a poor excuse, nonsense.
   Canada, US, countable, slang, uncountable
9. A low stool.
10. A patient who is difficult to treat, especially one who complains of a minor or imagined illness.
    derogatory

Equivalents

Examples

“1590-96, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, 1750, The Works of Spenser, Volume 3, page 181, Therefore the Vulgar did about him flock / And cluster thick unto his leaſings vain; / Like fooliſh Flies about an Honey-Crock; / In hope by him great Benefit to gain, / And uncontrolled Freedom to obtain.”

“old crocks’ home”

home for the aged

“He was getting very proud of the way he had learned to manage his game leg, and it occurred to him that here was a chance of testing his balance. […] “Not so bad that, for a crock,” he told himself, as he lay full length in the sun watching the faint line of the Haripol hills overtopping the ridge of Crask.”

“He was in love with a girl, whose full name he did not tell me, and whom he had not seen for two years. She was a Lady Diana Someone, so much I knew, very lovely, a sort of relation, and he believed he had a chance if only the doctors could do something to help his asthma. “Can′t ask a girl to marry a crock.””

“Girl: "Will you always be a bit of a crock?" Man: "According to my doctor, no." Girl: "I was afraid you looked bad-tempered because you were crocked up for life."”

“old crocks race”

veteran car rally

“That's a bunch of crock.”

“The story is a crock.”

“1709, Isaac Bickerstaff (Richard Steele), The Tatler, 1822, Alexander Chalmers (editor), The Tatler, 2007 Facsimile Edition, page 12, I then inquired for the person that belonged to the petticoat; and, to my great surprise, was directed to a very beautiful young damsel, with so pretty a face and shape, that I bid her come out of the crowd, and seated her upon a little crock at my left hand.”

“Mumford (1970) noted that the terms ‘crock’, ‘gomer’, and ‘turkey’, were sometimes utilized by interns to designate different types of undesirable patients, and sometimes used synonymously.”

“[…] “here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs, with Uncle Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching cold at the door, and the boy grimed with crock and dirt from the hair of his head to the sole of his foot!””

CEFR level