1400–50; late Middle English crikke, perhaps akin to crick 2
If you have a crick, it means there's a cramp or a painful stiffness in your neck. You might wake with a crick in your neck after sleeping in an uncomfortable position. Staring up at the stars might give you a crick in your neck, and so might traveling a long time on a bus or in a car, or any other activity that limits the movement of your head and neck. You might also end a challenging yoga class with a crick in your neck. Experts aren't sure where crick comes from, though it may be onomatopœic, echoing the sound of a creaking joint.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They may end up with more than a crick in their neck.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 3, 2026
It had been a stunning first half, a six-try epic that gave you a crick in your neck such was the flow from one end to the other.
From BBC ● Jul. 26, 2025
Various courts have since let us know that nope, 'twas merely a small crick against the doomsday direction in which we were previously heading.
From Salon ● Aug. 6, 2021
I may have a permanent crick in my neck from lugging a substantial dog basket home from outside a mansion in Primrose Hill.
From The New Yorker ● Nov. 12, 2018
He sent us off to the crick on our own.
From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted by scientists from the Francis Crick Institute, Stockholm University, the University of Aberdeen, and the University of East Anglia.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 5, 2026
Meanwhile, Crick was living a colorful personal life.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 4, 2026
One day, Crick thought, it might even be possible to transcribe the entire genetic code of a human being.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 4, 2026
Watson shared the Nobel in 1962 with Maurice Wilkins and Francis Crick for the DNA's double helix structure discovery.
From BBC ● Nov. 8, 2025
“The Club never met as a whole,” Crick recalled: “It always had a rather ethereal existence.”
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The lobby occupies the old Terminal Station, a beaux-arts structure that was built in 1909 and causes neck cricks with its 82-foot-high ceiling dome.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 20, 2017
We used to put fish nets in the rivers and cricks and get maybe 2,500 to 4,500 salmon, just to feed our teams.
From Time Magazine Archive
No one knows that better than the purveyors of products designed to ease or ward off cricks in the lower back.
From Time Magazine Archive
As the swing cricked a hundred cricks, Cat thought about the summer and all the disappointments and surprises it had brought her.
From "Caterpillar Summer" by Gillian McDunn
Nephew Shawn does a knee bend and cricks his neck from side to side, like he’s done this a billion times.
From "Better Nate Than Ever" by Tim Federle
One of them, in a wee tartan skirt, strikes cricked and awkward poses, then gets it in the neck, mouthing the word “fashion” at the last gasp.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 14, 2019
I remember reading the fourth in the playground with my friend, both of us reading separate pages with our necks cricked.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 24, 2017
The heads are disproportionately big, the hands claw-like, the limbs flaccid or cricked and skewed in defiance of anatomy to get across further expression or character.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 10, 2010
If you are worried about getting a cricked neck, take a pillow case and stuff it with clothes at night.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 21, 2010
Nanuq opened his big mouth and made a popping sound as he cricked his neck.
From "Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz
The porch swing cricked five hundred times before Cat crawled under the covers next to her brother, and it was still cricking when she closed her eyes and fell asleep.
From "Caterpillar Summer" by Gillian McDunn
He listened and heard only the cricking heat and the hiss of distance.
From "The Pearl" by John Steinbeck
Caul stood cricking his neck from side to side and stretching his arms boredly.
From "Hollow City" by Ransom Riggs
When they get home, they yawning, crickets is cricking.
From "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett
Close by them the odd man was strutting in stiff, ungainly attitudes, cricking his neck and elbows, and tossing up his toes.
From The Field of Clover by Housman, Laurence
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
