crack, to talk big, boast, brag. L. L. L. iv. 3. 268; spelt crake, Spenser, F. Q. vii. 7. 50; Sir Thos. More, i. 2. 29. Hence cracker, boaster, King John, ii. 1. 147. The vb. crack in this sense is in prov. use in Scotland and in England in the north country, Midlands, and E. Anglia. ME. crakyn, to boast; ‘crakere, bost-maker’ (Prompt. EETS. 393).
crack, to damage, impair. Phr. cracked within the ring, said of a coin cracked at the rim; but constantly used with reference to impaired virginity. Hamlet, ii. 2. 448; Beaumont and Fl., Captain, ii. 1 (Jacomo). The ring was the inmost circle around the inscription; a piece cracked within that ring could be legally refused, and was no longer current.
crackmans, a hedge. (Cant.) ‘At the crackmans’, beside the hedge, B. Jonson, Gipsies Metamorphosed (Jackman). See NED.
crag, the neck. Spenser, Shep. Kal., Feb., 82, Sept., 45. A north-country word, see EDD. (s.v. Crag, sb.3).
craggue, a lean, scraggy person. Only in Udall, tr. of Apoph., Diogenes, § 150.
crake; see [crack].
crambe, cabbage, in literary use only fig., and gen. in reference to the L. phrase crambe repetita, cabbage served up again, applied by Juvenal (Sat. vii. 154) to any tedious repetition. ‘Our Prayers . . . the same Crambe of words’, Milton, Animadv. ii.; Sir T. Browne, Rel. Medici, last §. Gk. κράμβη, a kind of cabbage.
crambe, crambo, a game in which one player gives a word or a line of a poem to which each of the others has to find a rime; if any one repeated a previous suggestion he had to pay a forfeit; ‘Crambe, another of the Divells games’, B. Jonson, Devill an Ass, v. 5; ‘Playing at Crambo in the waggon’, Pepys, Diary (May 20, 1660).
†cramocke, a crooked stick. Mirror for Mag., Madan, st. 6. Corrupt form of [cammock].
cramp-ring, a ring supposed to be a remedy against cramp, falling sickness, and the like; esp. one of those which the Kings of England used to hallow on Good Friday for this purpose. Boorde, Introd. (ed. Furnivall, p. 121); Berners, Letter in Brand Pop. Antiq. (ed. 1813, l. 129); Middleton, Roaring Girl, iv. 2 (Mis. O.); Cartwright, The Ordinary, iii. 1 (Moth).