different between trick vs crook

English

Etymology

Uncertain.

• Perhaps from From Middle English *trikke, from Old Northern French trique (related to Old French trichier; French: tricher), itself possibly from Middle High German trechen (“to launch a shot at, play a trick on”), but the Old French verb more likely is derived from Vulgar Latin *tricc?re, from Late Latin tric?re, from Latin tr?cor, tr?c?r? (“behave in an evasive manner, search for detours; trifle, delay”).
• Alternatively, perhaps from Dutch trek (“a pull, draw, trick”), from trekken (“to draw”), from Middle Dutch trekken, tr?ken (“to pull, place, put, move”), from Old Dutch *trekkan, *trekan (“to move, drag”), from Proto-Germanic *trakjan?, *trekan? (“to drag, scrape, pull”), from Proto-Indo-European *dreg- (“to drag, scrape”).

If the second proposal is correct, the term is cognate with Low German trekken, Middle High German trecken, trechen, Danish trække, and Old Frisian trekka, Romanian truc and other Romance languages.

Compare track, treachery, trig, and trigger.

Pronunciation

• enPR: tr?k, IPA^(key): /t??k/, [t??????k], [t?????k]
• Rhymes: -?k

Noun

trick (plural tricks)

1. Something designed to fool or swindle.

2. A single element of a magician's (or any variety entertainer's) act; a magic trick.

3. An entertaining difficult physical action.
   • 1995, All Aboard for Space: Introducing Space to Youngsters (page 158)

     Yo-yo tricks involving sleeping the yo-yo (like "walking the dog" and "rocking the baby") cannot be performed in space.

4. An effective, clever or quick way of doing something.
5. Mischievous or annoying behavior; a prank.

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

6. (dated) A particular habit or manner; a peculiarity; a trait.
   • c. 1595, William Shakespeare, King John Act I, scene I

     He hath a trick of Cœur de Lion's face.

   • 1606, William Shakespeare, King Lear act IV, scene VI:

     The trick of that voice I do well remember.

7. A knot, braid, or plait of hair.

   • I cannot tell , but it stirs me more than all your court curls , or your spangles , or your tricks

8. (card games) A sequence in which each player plays a card and a winning play is determined.
9. (slang) A sex act, chiefly one performed for payment; an act of prostitution.
   • 1988, John H. Lindquist, Misdemeanor Crime: Trivial Criminal Pursuit, page 43:

     Perhaps the most important thing a prostitute learns is how to "manage" the client; how to con him into spending more money than he planned. Learning how to perform tricks takes only a few minutes. Learning how to "hustle" the client takes longer.

   • 2010, Richard Gill, Paloma Azul, page 139:

     "How did you get into all this?" "I started doing tricks when I was young and I don't mean the magic circle. I learned about sex from an early age. There was nothing else to do in Pitsea except heavy petting and getting F grades at school."

   • 2019, Julie S. Draskoczy, Belomor: Criminality and Creativity in Stalin’s Gulag:

     When he later asked her to strip and perform tricks for him, she refused, and he chased her away. She had similar experiences with other men until she eventually fell into prostitution: […]

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:trick.
10. (slang) A customer to a prostitute.
    • 2011, Iceberg Slim, Pimp: The Story of My Life (page 99)

      Ten minutes after she got down she broke luck. A white trick in a thirty-seven Buick picked her up. I timed her. She had racehorse speed.

11. A daily period of work, especially in shift-based jobs.
    • 1899, New York (State), Bureau of Statistics, Deptartment of Labor, Annual Report:

      Woodside Junction—On 8 hour basis, first trick $60, second trick $60, third trick $50.

    • 1949, Labor arbitration reports, page 738

      The Union contends that Fifer was entitled to promotion to the position of Group Leader on the third trick in the Core Room Department.

12. (nautical) A sailor's spell of work at the helm, usually two hours long.
13. A toy; a trifle; a plaything.
    • 1599, William Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim

      the tricks and toyes that in them lurke,

Synonyms

• (something designed to fool): artifice, con, gambit, ploy, rip-off, See also Thesaurus:deception
• (magic trick): illusion, magic trick, sleight of hand
• (customer to a prostitute): john, see also Thesaurus:prostitute's client
• (entertaining difficult physical action):
• (daily period of work): shift

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

trick (third-person singular simple present tricks, present participle tricking, simple past and past participle tricked)

1. (transitive) To fool; to cause to believe something untrue; to deceive.

2. (heraldry) To draw (as opposed to blazon - to describe in words).
   • They forget that they are in the statutes: […] there they are trick'd, they and their pedigrees.

3. To dress; to decorate; to adorn fantastically; often followed by up, off, or out.
   • 1735, Alexander Pope, Of the Characters of Women

     Trick her off in air.

   • 1693, John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

     Tricking up their children in fine clothes.

   • 1825, Thomas Macaulay, An Essay on John Milton

     They are simple, but majestic, records of the feelings of the poet; as little tricked out for the public eye as his diary would have been.

Synonyms

• (to fool): con, dupe, fool, gull, have, hoodwink, pull the wool over someone's eyes, rip off
• (to trick out): mod
• See also Thesaurus:deceive

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

trick (comparative tricker, superlative trickest)

1. Involving trickery or deception.

2. Able to perform tricks.

3. Defective or unreliable.

4. (chiefly US, slang) Stylish or cool.

Danish

Etymology

From English trick.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): [?t?????]

Noun

trick (singular definite tricket, plural indefinite trickene)

1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.

Synonyms

• kneb

Further reading

• “trick” in Den Danske Ordbog

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