Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To make a grating or squeaking sound.
  • intransitive verb To move with a creaking sound.
  • noun A grating or squeaking sound.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To make a sharp, harsh, grating, or squeaking sound, as by the friction of hard substances: as, the gate creaks on its hinges; creaking shoes.
  • To cause to make a sharp, harsh, grating, or squeaking sound.
  • noun A sharp, harsh, grating sound, as that produced by the friction of hard substances.
  • noun A dialectal variant of crake.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To produce a creaking sound with.
  • intransitive verb To make a prolonged sharp grating or squeaking sound, as by the friction of hard substances.
  • noun The sound produced by anything that creaks; a creaking.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The sound produced by anything that creaks; a creaking.
  • verb intransitive To make a prolonged sharp grating or squeaking sound, as by the friction of hard substances.
  • verb transitive To produce a creaking sound with.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a squeaking sound
  • verb make a high-pitched, screeching noise

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English creken, croak, complain, of imitative origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English creken, metathesis of Old English cearcian. Cognate with Albanian grykë ("throat").

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