crock

Noun · Verb
Synonyms: carbon blacklampblacksootsmutearthenware jar

WordNet 3.0

Noun (3)

  1. a black colloidal substance consisting wholly or principally of amorphous carbon and used to make pigments and inkSynonyms: carbon blacklampblacksootsmut
  2. nonsense; foolish talk“that's a crock”
  3. an earthen jar (made of baked clay)Synonyms: earthenware jar

Verb (2)

  1. release color when rubbed, of badly dyed fabric
  2. soil with or as with crock
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Webster's Dictionary (GCIDE)

Crock \Crock\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Crocked (kr[o^]kt); p. pr. & vb. n. Crocking.] To soil by contact, as with soot, or with the coloring matter of badly dyed cloth. [1913 Webster]
Crock \Crock\, v. i. To give off crock or smut. [1913 Webster]
Crock \Crock\, v. t. To lay up in a crock; as, to crock butter. --Halliwell. [1913 Webster]
Crock \Crock\ (kr[o^]k), n. [Cf. W. croeg cover, Scot. crochit covered.] The loose black particles collected from combustion, as on pots and kettles, or in a chimney; soot; smut; also, coloring matter which rubs off from cloth. [1913 Webster]
Crock \Crock\, n. A low stool. "I . . . seated her upon a little crock." --Tatler. [1913 Webster]
Crock \Crock\ (kr[o^]k), n. [AS. croc, croca, crog, croh; akin to D. kruik, G. krug, Icel. krukka, Dan. krukke, Sw. kruka; but cf. W. crwc bucket, pail, crochan pot, cregen earthen vessel, jar. Cf. Cruet.] Any piece of crockery, especially of coarse earthenware; an earthen pot or pitcher. [1913 Webster]

Like foolish flies about an honey crock. --Spenser. [1913 Webster]

Crock \Crock\, n.

1.a person who is worn out with age or illness. [PJC]

2.an old person who complains frequently about illness, especially imaginary ailments. [PJC]

crock \crock\, n. nonsense; balderdash; humbug; -- usually used in the phrase a crock. [slang] [PJC]

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

crock

[American scatologism "crock of shit"] 1. An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. For example, using small integers to represent error codes without the program interpreting them to the user (as in, for example, Unix "make(1)", which returns code 139 for a process that dies due to segfault).

2.A technique that works acceptably, but which is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least. For example, a too-clever programmer might write an assembler which mapped instruction mnemonics to numeric opcodes algorithmically, a trick which depends far too intimately on the particular bit patterns of the opcodes. (For another example of programming with a dependence on actual opcode values, see The Story of Mel.) Many crocks have a tightly woven, almost completely unmodifiable structure. See kluge, brittle. The adjectives "crockish" and "crocky", and the nouns "crockishness" and "crockitude", are also used. [Jargon File]

The Jargon File

crock n.

[from the American scatologism crock of shit]

1.An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. For example, using small integers to represent error codes without the program interpreting them to the user (as in, for example, Unix make(1) , which returns code 139 for a process that dies due to segfault).

2.A technique that works acceptably, but which is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least. For example, a too-clever programmer might write an assembler which mapped instruction mnemonics to numeric opcodes algorithmically, a trick which depends far too intimately on the particular bit patterns of the opcodes. (For another example of programming with a dependence on actual opcode values, see The Story of Mel' in Appendix A.) Many crocks have a tightly woven, almost completely unmodifiable structure. See kluge, brittle. The adjectives crockish and crocky, and the nouns crockishness and crockitude, are also used.

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