CROTCHET • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Crotchet

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noun

Crotchet n.

A forked support; a crotch. "The crotchets of their cot in columns rise."

(Mus.) A time note, with a stem, having one fourth the value of a semibreve, one half that of a minim, and twice that of a quaver; a quarter note.

(Fort.) An indentation in the glacis of the covered way, at a point where a traverse is placed.

(Mil.) 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.

(Print.) A bracket. See Bracket.

(Med.) An instrument of a hooked form, used in certain cases in the extraction of a fetus.

A perverse fancy; a whim which takes possession of the mind; a conceit. "He ruined himself and all that trusted in him by crotchets that he could never explain to any rational man."

verb

Crotchet v. i. To play music in measured time. (Obs.)

See images of 'Crotchet'

Etymology of 'Crotchet'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Crotchet" Quotes from Famous Books

... "amour-propre" of every human being but himself, was the crotchet of this able, but fiery and grasping little man. He had a strong relish for public representation in his own person, but an extreme abhorrence of the like display in any other. He quelled, he kept ...

— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... "small deer," as they do parrots, to bite people's fingers, on purpose to give them good advice "not to venture so near the cage another time." As for their "six quavers divided into three quavers and a dotted crotchet," I suppose they may go into Jeremy Bentham's next budget of Fallacies, along with the "melodious and proportionable kinde of musicke," recorded in your last number, ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... Wives (L'['e]cole des Femmes, "training for wives"), a comedy by Moli['e]re (1662). Arnolphe has a crotchet about the proper training of girls to make good wives, and tries his scheme upon Agnes, whom he adopts from a peasant's cottage, and designs in due time to make his wife. He sends her from early childhood to a convent, where difference of sex and the conventions of society are wholly ignored. ...

— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... in whose judgment Shelley put especial trust. There were many points of agreement. Peacock, at that time, shared, in a more practical way, Shelley's desire for root and branch reform; both wore poets, although not equally gifted, and both loved Plato and the Greek tragedians. In "Crotchet Castle" Peacock has expressed his own delight in Greek literature through the talk of the ...

— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... the fact that she has money will make him very slow to speak. Besides, he has a silly crotchet in his head now. He thinks that if he tried to marry her it would look as if he had given ...

— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

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