crotchet

From Old French crochet (“small hook”), from croc + -et (diminutive suffix), from Old Norse krókr (“hook”). The musical note was named so because of a small hook on its stem in black notation (in modern notation this hook is on the quaver/eighth note).

crotchet (plural crotchets)

1. (music) A musical note one beat long in 4/4 time.
2. A sharp curve or crook; a shape resembling a hook (obsolete except in crochet hook).
3. (archaic) a whim or a fancy
   • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 3, chapter XIII, Democracy

     Thou who walkest in a vain shew, looking out with ornamental dilettante sniff and serene supremacy at all Life and all Death; and amblest jauntily; perking up thy poor talk into crotchets, thy poor conduct into fatuous somnambulisms […]

   • De Quincey

     He ruined himself and all that trusted in him by crotchets that he could never explain to any rational man.

4. A forked support; a crotch.
   • Dryden

     The crotchets of their cot in columns rise.

5. (military, historical) An indentation in the glacis of the covered way, at a point where a traverse is placed.
6. (military) The arrangement of a body of troops, either forward or rearward, so as to form a line nearly perpendicular to the general line of battle.
7. (printing) A square bracket.

• (musical note): quarter note (US)

• crotchety

crotchet (third-person singular simple present crotchets, present participle crotcheting, simple past and past participle crotcheted)

1. to make needlework by looping thread with a hooked needle; to crochet
2. (obsolete) to play music in measured time

   (Can we find and add a quotation of John Donne to this entry?)

From Old French crochet (“small hook”), from croc (with diminutive suffix -et), from Old Norse krókr (“hook”).

crotchet m (plural crotchets)

1. (Jersey, punctuation) bracket

• crotchet cârré (“square bracket”)