Definitions

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

  • noun Soot.
  • intransitive verb To soil with or as if with crock.
  • intransitive verb To give off soot or color.
  • noun An earthenware vessel.
  • noun A broken piece of earthenware.
  • noun Slang Foolish talk; nonsense.
  • noun One that is worn-out, decrepit, or impaired; a wreck.
  • intransitive verb To become weak or disabled. Often used with up.
  • intransitive verb To disable; wreck. Often used with up.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To lay up in a crock: as, to crock butter.
  • noun A little curl of hair; in the plural, the under hair on the neck.
  • noun Same as crook, 7.
  • To black with soot or other matter collected from combustion; by extension, to soil in any similar way, particularly by contact with imperfectly dyed cloth: as, to crock one's hands.
  • To give off crock, smut, or color: as, stockings warranted not to crock.
  • noun Soot, or the black matter collected from combustion on pots and kettles or in a chimney; smut in general, as from coloring matter in cloth.
  • To decrease; decay.
  • noun An old ewe.
  • noun An earthen vessel; a pot or jar (properly earthen, but also sometimes of iron, brass, or other metal) used as a receptacle for meal, butter, milk, etc., or in cooking.
  • noun A fragment of earthenware; a potsherd, such as is used to cover the hole in the bottom of a flower-pot.
  • noun A low seat; a stool.
  • noun In cricket, a worthless player.

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

  • transitive verb To lay up in a crock.
  • noun slang nonsense; balderdash; humbug; -- usually used in the phrase a crock.
  • noun A low stool.
  • intransitive verb To give off crock or smut.
  • transitive verb To soil by contact, as with soot, or with the coloring matter of badly dyed cloth.
  • noun a person who is worn out with age or illness.
  • noun an old person who complains frequently about illness, especially imaginary ailments.
  • noun The loose black particles collected from combustion, as on pots and kettles, or in a chimney; soot; smut; also, coloring matter which rubs off from cloth.
  • noun Any piece of crockery, especially of coarse earthenware; an earthen pot or pitcher.

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

  • noun A stoneware or earthenware jar or storage container.
  • noun A piece of broken pottery, a shard.
  • noun UK A person who is physically limited by age, illness or injury.
  • noun UK An old or broken-down vehicle (and formerly a horse).
  • noun slang, countable and uncountable Silly talk, a foolish belief, a poor excuse, nonsense.
  • verb To break something or injure someone.
  • verb textiles, leatherworking To transfer coloring through abrasion from one item to another.
  • verb horticulture To cover the drain holes of a planter with stones or similar material, in order to ensure proper drainage.
  • verb transitive To store (butter, etc.) in a crock.

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

  • noun an earthen jar (made of baked clay)
  • noun a black colloidal substance consisting wholly or principally of amorphous carbon and used to make pigments and ink
  • noun nonsense; foolish talk
  • verb release color when rubbed, of badly dyed fabric
  • verb soil with or as with crock

Etymologies

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

[Origin unknown.]

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

[Middle English crokke, from Old English crocc. Sense 2, short for crock of shit.]

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

[Earlier, old ewe that has ceased bearing; probably akin to Norwegian krake, sickly animal, and Middle Dutch kraecke, broken-down horse.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English crokke, from Old English crocc, crocca ("crock, pot, vessel"), from Proto-Germanic *krukkō, *krukkô (“vessel”), from Proto-Indo-European *k(')rōug(')-, *k(')rōuk(')- (“vessel”). Cognate with Dutch kruik ("jar, jug"), German Krug ("jug"), Danish krukke ("jar"), Icelandic krukka ("pot, jar"), Old English crōg, crōh ("crock, pitcher, vessel"). See also cruse.

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Examples

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  • Typical in a reply to a presidential address "What a CROCK!"

    January 25, 2007