/kɹiːk/, /kɹik/, /kɹɪk/
OriginFrom Middle English creke, kreke, creake, of unclear origin.
It existed alongside a second variant in Middle English cryke, krike, cricke, from Old Norse kriki. The forms creke, kreke, creake possibly continue Old English *creca (attested in the diminutive crecca (“creek, bay, wharf”) also found in Anglo-Latin as creca, crecca), from Proto-West Germanic *krekō, from Proto-Germanic *krekô, *krekuz (“corner, hook, angle, bend, bight”), from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to turn, to wind”). Compare typologically English bight, akin to bend, bow.
See also Old Dutch creka, crika (“inlet, cove, creek”), Old Norse kriki (“cove, bight”), kríkr (“angle, corner, nook, bay”), Old Norse kraki (“pole with a hook, anchor”), and possibly Old Norse krókr (“hook, bend, bight”). Modern cognates include West Frisian kreek (“creek”), Dutch kreek (“creek, cove, inlet, bight”), and French crique (“cove”) (borrowed from Germanic).
Early British colonists of Australia and the Americas used the term in the usual British way, to name inlets; as settlements followed the inlets upstream and inland, the names were retained and creek came to be used to refer to any small waterway. A similar semantic development occurred in Dutch and French, where the word originally meant "bay" but came to mean "stream" especially in the French and Dutch colonies (French Guiana, Dutch Guiana and Indonesia).
- BritishA small inlet, often saltwater, leading to the sea or to the main channel of a river, especially a river estuary.
“Seven miles to the north of Venice, the banks of sand, which near the city rise little above low-water mark, attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at last into fields of salt morass, r”
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken any way you please, is bad, / And strands them in forsaken guts and creeks / No decent soul would think of visiting.”
- BritishThe inner part of a port that is used as a dock for small boats.
- Australia, Canada, New-Zealand, USA stream of water, typically a stream of freshwater smaller than a river; in Australia, also used of river-sized bodies of water.
“We all feel it Looming, even when we're awake, out there ahead someplace, the way you come to feel a River or Creek ahead, before anything else,— sound, sky, vegetation,— may have announced it.”
- Any turn or winding.
- One of a Native American tribe from the Southeastern United States, also known as the Muscogee.
- The Muskogean language of the Creek tribe.
- A surname.
- slangThe ship of characters Craig Tucker and Tweek Tweak from the South Park series.
“For at least a decade, people on the internet have been drawing fan art of the love between this two characters (a ship known as "Creek"). A cursory search of DeviantArt shows Creek art dating back to”
“The episode’s humor and heart speak to viewers bemused at the concept of yaoi and devoted “Creek” shippers alike, but it isn’t the child characters learning something by the show’s conclusion. Instead”
“This [“Tweek vs. Craig”] is a regular season 3 outing that aired in June 1999, and I picked it not merely because I'm a hardcore Creek shipper.”
- not-comparableOf or pertaining to the Creek tribe.
“The chieftain was well versed in Creek history.”
Formscreeks(plural) · crick(alternative, North-American, dialectal) · crike(alternative, UK, dialectal, obsolete) · cryke(alternative, UK, dialectal, obsolete) · crik(alternative, pronunciation-spelling) · Creeks(plural) · Creek(plural)