different between crook vs culprit

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k??k/
• (obsolete) IPA^(key): /k?u?k/
• Rhymes: -?k

Etymology 1

From Middle English croke, crok, from Old English *cr?c (“hook, bend, crook”), from Proto-West Germanic *kr?k, from Proto-Germanic *kr?kaz (“bend, hook”), from Proto-Indo-European *greg- (“tracery, basket, bend”).

Cognate with Dutch kreuk (“a bend, fold, wrinkle”), Middle Low German kroke, krake (“fold, wrinkle”), Danish krog (“crook, hook”), Swedish krok (“crook, hook”), Icelandic krókur (“hook”).

Noun

crook (plural crooks)

1. A bend; turn; curve; curvature; a flexure.
   • 1842, William Edward Hoskins, De Valencourt

     he walks bye lanes, and crooks

2. A bending of the knee; a genuflection.
3. A bent or curved part; a curving piece or portion (of anything).
4. (obsolete) A lock or curl of hair.
5. (obsolete) A gibbet.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Edmund Spenser to this entry?)

6. (obsolete) A support beam consisting of a post with a cross-beam resting upon it; a bracket or truss consisting of a vertical piece, a horizontal piece, and a strut.
7. A shepherd's crook; a staff with a semi-circular bend ("hook") at one end used by shepherds.
   • 1970, The New English Bible with the Apocrypha, Oxford Study Edition, published 1976, Oxford University Press, Psalms 23-4, p.583:

     Even though I walk through a / valley dark as death / I fear no evil, for thou art with me, / thy staff and thy crook are my / comfort.

8. A bishop's staff of office.
9. An artifice; a trick; a contrivance.
   • c. 1547, Thomas Cranmer, Against Transubstantiation

     for all your brags, hooks, and crooks

10. A person who steals, lies, cheats or does other dishonest or illegal things; a criminal.
    • 1973 November 17, Richard Nixon, reported 1973 November 18, The Washington Post, Nixon Tells Editors, ‘I'm Not a Crook’,

      "People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I?m not a crook. I?ve earned everything I?ve got."

11. A pothook.
12. (music) A small tube, usually curved, applied to a trumpet, horn, etc., to change its pitch or key.

Synonyms

• (criminal): See Thesaurus:criminal

Derived terms

• by hook or by crook
• by hook or crook (US)

Translations

Verb

crook (third-person singular simple present crooks, present participle crooking, simple past and past participle crooked)

1. (transitive) To bend, or form into a hook.

   He crooked his finger toward me.

   • c. 1600, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2, [1]

     No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, / And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee / Where thrift may follow fawning.

   • 1784, William Blake, Songs from An Island in the Moon, in Blake: The Complete Poems, edited by W. H. Stevenson, Routledge, 3rd edition, 2007, p. 50,

     For if a damsel's blind or lame, / Or nature's hand has crooked her frame, / Or if she's deaf or is wall-eyed; / Yet if her heart is well inclined, / Some tender lover she shall find / That panteth for a bride.

   • 1917, Leo Tolstoy, Constance Garnett (translator) Anna Karenina, Part 4, Chapter 5,

     “ […] In the following cases: physical defect in the married parties, desertion without communication for five years,” he said, crooking a short finger covered with hair […] .

2. (intransitive) To become bent or hooked.
3. To turn from the path of rectitude; to pervert; to misapply; to twist.
   • 1597, Francis Bacon, "Of Wisdom For a Man's Self," The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, [2]

     The referring of all to a man's self, is more tolerable in a sovereign prince; because themselves are not only themselves, but their good and evil is at the peril of the public fortune. But it is a desperate evil, in a servant to a prince, or a citizen in a republic. For whatsoever affairs pass such a man's hands, he crooketh them to his own ends; which must needs be often eccentric to the ends of his master, or state.

Derived terms

• crooked (adjective)

Translations

Etymology 2

From crooked (“dishonestly come by”).

Adjective

crook (comparative crooker, superlative crookest)

1. (Australia, New Zealand, slang) Bad, unsatisfactory, not up to standard.

   That work you did on my car is crook, mate.

   Not turning up for training was pretty crook.

   • 1981, Herman Charles Bosman, The Collected Works of Herman Charles Bosman, page 101,

     The soup was crook. It was onkus. A yellow-bellied platypus couldn?t drink it […]

   • “They?re always crook at my home.”

2. (Australia, New Zealand, slang) Ill, sick.

   I?m feeling a bit crook.

3. (Australia, New Zealand, slang) Annoyed, angry; upset.

   be crook at/about; go crook at

   • 2006, Jimmy Butt, Felicity Dargan, I've Been Bloody Lucky: The Story of an Orphan Named Jimmy Butt, page 17,

     Ann explained to the teacher what had happened and the nuns went crook at me too.

   • 2007, Jo Wainer, Bess, Lost: Illegal Abortion Stories, page 159,

     I went home on the tram, then Mum went crook at me because I was late getting home—I had tickets for Mum and her friend to go to the Regent that night and she was annoyed because I was late.

Derived terms

• crook as Rookwood

References

Middle English

Verb

crook

1. Alternative form of croken

English

Etymology

From Anglo-Norman cul. prit, contraction of culpable: prest (d'averrer nostre bille) 'guilty: ready (to prove our case)', words used by prosecutor in opening a trial, mistaken in English for an address to the defendant. See culpable.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?k???p??t]

Noun

culprit (plural culprits)

1. The person or thing at fault for a problem or crime.

   I have tightened the loose bolt that was the culprit; it should work now.
2. (Britain, law) A prisoner accused but not yet tried.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:criminal

Related terms

• culpable
• mea culpa

Translations