Other forms: crooks
A crook is a staff with a hooked end, of the kind a shepherd carries. A shepherd's crook, a bishop's crook, lean on a crook.
The hook was for catching a sheep by the leg. A bishop's crosier is the ceremonial version, which is why the shape appears on church carvings. The second sense is a dishonest person — a bunch of crooks — and comes from crooked, meaning bent. Note the crook of your arm or your elbow, meaning the bend; and by hook or by crook, meaning by any means available.
1nouncrookA staff with a hooked end.
“The crook is about six feet long and older than the farm.”
2noundishonestA dishonest person.
“The whole board turned out to be crooks.”
3nounbendThe bend of an arm or a branch.
“She carried the whole lot in the crook of one arm.”
crook is a hook, a bend, or a dishonest person.
Old Norse krokr meant a hook. Crook, crooked and crochet all come from it, and the dishonest sense is the same metaphor as bent — a crook is somebody who is not straight.
Proto-Indo-European
*greg- — tracery, basket, bend
Proto-Germanic
*krōkaz — bend, hook
Proto-West Germanic
*krōk
Old English
*crōc — hook, bend, crook
Middle English
croke
English, today
crook
From Middle English croke, crok, from Old English crōc (“hook, bend, crook”), from Proto-West Germanic krōk, from Proto-Germanic krōkaz (“bend, hook”), from Proto-Indo-European greg- (“tracery, basket, bend”). Cognate with Dutch kreuk (“a bend, fold, wrinkle”), Middle Low German kroke, krake (“fold, wrinkle”), Danish krog (“crook, hook”), Swedish krok (“crook, hook”), Icelandic krókur (“hook”). Compare typologically křivák (< křivý < krivъ, whence also krivьda).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire