Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To ease the body by stool.
  • noun Human excrement: usually in the plural.
  • To void, as excrement.
  • noun A shoemakers' name for an infant's shoe.

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

  • intransitive verb To ease the body by stool; to go to stool.

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

  • noun A squawk.
  • noun A discordant note.
  • verb of a bird To squawk.
  • verb To incorrectly play a note by hitting a partial other than the one intended.
  • noun slang penis.
  • verb Australian slang To laugh.
  • verb intransitive To defecate.
  • verb US, slang To kill.
  • noun An act of defecation.
  • noun Excrement.
  • noun Rubbish.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Onomatopoeia.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From cock.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin cacare ("to defecate"). Compare caca.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Mild UK slang for shit, by extension anything sub-standard or shonky.

    August 29, 2008

  • From the OED. This word can be a verb:

    app. ad. L. cac-re in same sense, whence also MDu. cacken, Du. kakken, early mod.Ger. kacken, Da. kakke; also Boh. kakati, Pol. kaka.

    1. intr. To void excrement.

    1436 Pol. Poems (1859) II. 170 Wythoute Calise in ther buttere the cakked. c1440 Promp. Parv. 58/1 Cakkyn, or fyystyn, caco. c1500 DUNBAR Feneit Frier 101 Ffor feir vncunnandly he cawkit. 1570 LEVINS Manip. 5 To cake, cacare. 1611 COTGR., Chier, to cacke. a1710 POPE Alley i, Some cack against the wall. 1731 in BAILEY II.

    2. trans. To void as excrement.

    1485 CAXTON Trevisa's Higden IV. x. (1527) 158 One that hadde cacked golde. 1549 CRANMER in Strype Life (1694) App. 105 Because the Devil could not get out at his mouth, the man blew him, or cacked him out behind.

    Or a noun:

    f. same source as prec.: used already in OE. in the comb. cac-hús ‘latrina’.

    c1600 Timon V. v. (1842) 89 Hee hath a face like one's that is at cack.

    Hence cacky a. dial. and slang, foul with excrement. (See also Eng. Dial. Dict.)

    1937 PARTRIDGE Dict. Slang s.v. cack. 1977 C. MCCULLOUGH Thorn Birds xvii. 407 ‘Don't you want to get married?’.. ‘Not bloody likely! Spend my life wiping snotty noses and cacky bums?’

    Both definitions are marked "Obs. or dial." Whew.

    August 29, 2008

  • I love that one of the citations is from Caxton.

    And that line from Timon is one of the bard's very best.

    But hang on, it's not Timon - Timon has no V. v. What is this new devilry?

    August 29, 2008

  • Hmm. Double-checked the OED. It definitely says V.v.

    August 29, 2008

  • The cognate of this is pretty widespread in the Slavic languages. In Slovene, for example, kakati "to poop", kakec "turd" (where -ati and -ec are standard verbal and nominal suffixes, respectively). Such words are not considered vulgar; rather, they are the words parents use with their children.

    August 30, 2008

  • I've only ever used this, or heard it used, as in cacked myself laughing.

    August 30, 2008

  • Ha! I love that!

    August 30, 2008

  • Cf. Italian caccare, to defecate. Often abbreviated to cacca' in informal usage. Bad news for Brazilian footballer Kaka' who plays for AC Milan :-(

    August 30, 2008

  • I've come across plethora's usage, also "I cacked myself", where the "laughing" part is understood.

    There is also "cack-handed", which can mean left-handed, but mostly I hear it in the sense of clumsy or inept. Apparently it's British, but it certainly has some currency in Australia.

    September 1, 2008

  • it spawned cackard

    May 2, 2009