crotchet

Etymology

From Middle English crochet, 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). Doublet of crochet, crocket, and croquet.

noun

1. (music) A musical note one beat long in 4/4 time.
2. (obsolete) A sharp curve or crook; a shape resembling a hook
3. (surgery, now chiefly historical) A hook-shaped instrument, especially as used in obstetric surgery.
   Either Doctor Denman or an old Woman would have waited—but since the horrid death-doing Crotchet has been found out, & its use permitted—Oh! many & many a Life has been flung away. 1 September 1797, Hester Lynch Piozzi, Thraliana
4. (archaic) A whim or a fancy.
   He ruined himself and all that trusted in him by crotchets that he could never explain to any rational man. 1847, Thomas De Quincey, “Secret Societies”, in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine
5. A forked support; a crotch.
6. (military, historical) An indentation in the glacis of the covered way, at a point where a traverse is placed.
7. (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.
8. (printing) A square bracket.

verb

1. (obsolete) to play music in measured time
2. Archaic form of crochet (knit by looping)