Forms: 5 crykke, cryk, 6–7 cricke, (8 creek, 9 creak), 6– crick. [Of uncertain origin; prob. onomatopœic, expressing the sudden check which the spasm causes; cf. next, and STITCH. It may owe its form partly to association with CROOK, which has this sense in Craven dialect: cf. the Sc. cleik similarly used, ‘cleik in the back’ (Jam.).]
A painful spasmodic affection of the muscles of the neck, back, or other part, appearing as a sudden stiffness which makes it more or less impossible to move the part.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 103/1. Crykke, sekenesse (or crampe), spasmus,… tetanus.
c. 1460. Rel. Ant., II. 29. Thou might stomble, and take the cryk.
1598. Florio, Adolomato, troubled with a cricke or wrinch in the necke or backe.
1639. Fuller, Holy War, Ep. Ded. (1840), 6. To have such a crick in his neck that he cannot look backward.
1668. R. L’Estrange, Vis. Quev. (1708), 173. ’Tis nothing … but a Crick she has got in her Back.
1749. Mrs. Delany, Life & Corr. (1861), II. 520. A violent creek has seized Mr. Monck’s neck, and he can’t stir.
1856. Whyte-Melville, Kate Cov., xiv. You … study the thermometer till you get a crick in your neck.
b. Applied to a disease of horses.
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1673), 284. The crick in the neck … is when the horse cannot turn his neck any manner of way, but hold it still right forth.
1727. Bradley, Fam. Dict., Flanks, a Distemper in Horses, the same being a Wrench, Crick, Stroke, or other Hurt got in his Back.
c. attrib.
1774. Mrs. Harris, in Priv. Lett. Ld. Malmesbury, I. 276. She has had what was formerly named a crick neck, but the modern phrase now for those vulgar things is rheumatism.
