crooner
Americannoun
-
a popular singer who sings in an evenly modulated, slightly exaggerated manner.
He was the kind of soulful, rockabilly-influenced crooner you might catch playing a place like the Liquor Lounge, and he reminded me of both Sinatra and Elvis.
-
someone who sings.
In karaoke, even the least talented crooner has a chance to aim for that big moment in the spotlight.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of crooner
Explanation
A crooner is a singer, especially a man who sings jazz standards. Frank Sinatra was a well-known crooner. The noun crooner describes a silky-voiced singer of sentimental jazz favorites, particularly a male singer. Crooners were especially popular from the late 1920s until the early 1950s. The increased use of microphones and radio broadcasting made it possible for crooners to sing softly and emotionally even when backed by a band. The rise of rock n roll helped bring the era of the crooner to an end. Crooner comes from the verb croon, "to sing softly and sadly."
Vocabulary lists containing crooner
This Week in Pop Culture: July 6–July 12, 2019
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Seabiscuit
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
With her high, bright soprano, Katrina Galka was a persuasive Clara—you believed in her emotional blossoming; tenor Roy Hage needed to be more of a crooner as Fabrizio.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026
Grammy-winning crooner Iglesias, 82, has made no public comments about the allegations.
From Barron's ● Jan. 15, 2026
This was around the time of Coogan's Portuguese crooner alter ego, Tony Ferrino.
From BBC ● Jan. 4, 2026
Carey, meanwhile, has generated 692 million streams — not too shabby, of course, but still not measuring up to the Canadian crooner.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 24, 2025
While he attended the races at Tanforan with Bing Crosby, the crooner found himself abandoned as fans and autograph-seekers smothered Howard.
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
Ms. Willetts devotes nearly an entire chapter—ostensibly on postwar nightlife in Las Vegas and Havana—to Frank Sinatra, head of America’s Rat Pack of lounge crooners and the “kingpin of ‘gentlemanly’ debauchery.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
Springer added that he prefers classic crooners, such as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, to Bublé.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 24, 2025
It took the Grammys until after the Summer of Love to fully acknowledge that pop music had moved beyond the crooners and show tunes of the show’s early days.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 31, 2025
It's certainly hard to imagine them really catching on in the early 50s, an age dominated by schmaltzy crooners, folk purists and show tunes.
From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2024
It drew crooners like Eddie Fisher and has been cited as an inspiration for the 1987 movie “Dirty Dancing.”
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 17, 2022
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.
