creak

To creak is to make that long, complaining squeak old wood makes when it takes weight. The third stair when you come in late, a garden gate, a rocking chair, the door in every ghost story ever filmed.

Creak is a noun as well — a creak on the landing — and the adjective is creaky: a creaky floorboard, a creaky old bed. It stretches to anything under strain and close to giving way: a booking system creaking under demand, an old bridge creaking in the wind. Do not mix it up with creek, a small stream, which sounds much the same, and do not mix it up with squeak, which is shorter and higher, the noise of a mouse or a wet shoe. Things creak and people rarely do — a knee can creak, but a person groans. The sound is slow: a hinge creaks open across a whole second, and that slowness is the whole picture.