Other forms: croaking, croaks, croaked
To croak is to make a deep hoarse sound. Frogs croak, croak out a word, a croaking voice.
It belongs to frogs and crows first, and the word is simply what those noises sound like. Applied to a person it means speaking with a rough dry voice, usually from illness or thirst. In British slang, to croak means to die, which is grim and old. Note croaky, describing a voice; and that a frog's croak is made by a vocal sac that works as an amplifier.
1verbcroakTo make a deep hoarse sound.
“With a sore throat, he could only croak his answers to the doctor.”
2verbspeakTo speak with a rough dry voice.
“After shouting at the match all afternoon, he could only croak a hello on the phone.”
croak is a hoarse sound.
Middle English croken is a back-formation from Old English cracettan, to croak, and the root is imitative. Crow, creak and crack come from the same family of noise words.
Proto-Indo-European
*gerh₂-
Proto-Germanic
*krēk-
Old English
crācettan — to croak
Middle English
*croken
English, today
croak
Built from
From Middle English croken, crouken, (also represented by craken > crake), back-formation from Old English crācettan (“to croak”) (also in derivative crǣcetung (“croaking”)), from Proto-Germanic krēk-, from Proto-Indo-European gerh₂-, from greh₂-k-, of imitative of the sound origin. See also Swedish kråka, German krächzen, Sanskrit गर्जति (“to growl”); also compare Latin grāculus (“jackdaw”), Serbo-Croatian grákati. More at crack, crake and craic.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire