crag

See also: crág and crág-

English

Pronunciation

A crag (sense 1).

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /kɹæɡ/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æɡ

Etymology 1

From 13th century Middle English crag, from Middle Irish crec, a contracted form of Old Irish carrac (compare Irish creig, Scottish Gaelic creag), possibly ultimately from the late Proto-Indo-European/substrate *kar (“stone, hard”); see also Old Armenian քար (kʿar, “stone”), Sanskrit खर (khara, “hard, solid”), Welsh carreg (“stone”).

Noun

crag (plural crags)

2. (Northern England) A rocky outcrop; a rugged steep cliff or rock.
   • 1810, Walter Scott, “Canto V. The Combat.”, in The Lady of the Lake; […], Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for John Ballantyne and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and William Miller, →OCLC, stanza IX, page 202:

     "Have, then, thy wish!"—he whistled shrill, / And he was answered from the hill; / Wild as the scream of the curlieu, / From crag to crag the signal flew.

   • 1835, Alfred Tennyson, “‘Break, Break, Break’”, in Poems. […], volume II, London: Edward Moxon, […], published 1842, →OCLC, stanza 3, page 229:

     Break, break, break, / At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! / But the tender grace of a day that is dead / Will never come back to me.

3. A rough, broken fragment of rock.
4. (geology) A partially compacted bed of gravel mixed with shells, of the Pliocene to Pleistocene epochs.

Alternative forms

• craig

Derived terms

• cragfast
• Crag Foot
• craggy
• crag martin
• cragsman

 

Translations

rocky outcrop

• Albanian: shkrep (sq) m, skërkë (sq) f
• Arabic: جُرْفٌ m (jurfun)
• Belarusian: скала́ f (skalá)
• Bulgarian: чукар (bg) m (čukar), канара (bg) f (kanara)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 峭壁 (zh) (qiàobì), 崖 (zh) (yá)

• Czech: útes (cs) m, převis (cs) m
• Finnish: kalliojyrkänne
• French: affleurement (fr) m, éperon rocheux m
• Galician: penedo (gl) m
• Georgian: კლდე (ka) (ḳlde)
• German: Felsen (de) m
• Greek:

  Ancient: κρημνός m (krēmnós), ἐρίπνη f (erípnē)

• Hungarian: szirt (hu), kőszirt (hu), szikla (hu), sziklaorom (hu), bérc (hu), sziklabérc (hu), sziklafok (hu)
• Irish: creig f
• Italian: costone (it) m, dirupo (it) m, strapiombo (it) m, precipizio (it) m, bricco m, bric m, falesia (it) f
• Japanese: 巨岩 (ja) (きょがん, kyogan), 崖 (ja) (がけ, gake)
• Latin: scopulus m
• Polish: skała (pl) f, grań (pl) f
• Portuguese: rochedo (pt) m, penha (pt) f
• Russian: скала́ (ru) f (skalá), утёс (ru) m (utjós)
• Scottish Gaelic: creag f, carraig f
• Spanish: afloramiento rocoso m, peñón m, despeñadero m
• Ukrainian: ске́ля f (skélja)

Etymology 2

A variant of craw.

Noun

crag (plural crags)

1. (dialectal or obsolete) The neck or throat.

References

• Dravidian Origins and the West: Newly Discovered Ties with the Ancient Culture and Languages, Including Basque, of the Pre-Indo-European Mediterranean World, p. 325
• Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition
• Scigliano, Eric (2007): Michelangelo's Mountain: The Quest For Perfection in the Marble Quarries of Carrara, p. 84

Further reading

• crag on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• CAGR

Middle English

Alternative forms

• cragge, kragge

Etymology

From Middle Irish crec, from Old Irish carrac, possibly from the late Proto-Indo-European/substrate *kar (“stone, hard”); see also Old Armenian քար (kʿar, “stone”), Sanskrit खर (khara, “hard, solid”), Welsh carreg (“stone”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kraɡ/

Noun

crag (plural cragges)

1. cliff

Descendants

• English: crag
• Yola: craggès

References

• “crag, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.