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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
creak
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
chair
▪ The chair creaked alarmingly under his weight.
door
▪ The door creaked open and Berger stepped in, Eggar at his back.
▪ The car door creaked open, slammed shut, and then footsteps raced toward the garage.
▪ I was nearly at the cubicle door when it creaked open and something squeezed out to take hold of me.
▪ She pushed against the door, it creaked open and she fell out on to the damp grassy verge.
▪ The door creaked open an inch.
▪ I scurried under the tractor as the doors began to creak open.
▪ The door creaks open or thumps shut hundreds of times a day 5 feet from the nest.
■ VERB
hear
▪ After a while, through the partially open cabin hatch, she heard the bed creak beneath his weight.
▪ Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking.
▪ As we camped next to the ice, we could hear it creaking and moaning long into the night.
▪ Wyatt had said later that you could almost hear his mouth muscles creaking.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ In the hall the flooboards creaked and the walls were damp.
▪ The key clicked inside the lock and the door creaked open.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Down the street a gate creaked open then snapped shut.
▪ Elsewhere in the financial system, the creaking noises are getting louder.
▪ Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking.
▪ Meanwhile, that part of the building shifted, rising and falling with the seasons, and the floors creaked constantly.
▪ Old panelling, creaking stairways and sloping floors remain.
▪ The F2B creaked through a 180-degree turn and began photographing another strip.
▪ The sky was clear, the stars were beautiful and the snow creaked underfoot.
▪ Then the gate creaked, setting off a drumroll in his heart.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Creak

Creak \Creak\ (kr[=e]k), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Creaked (kr[=e]kt); p. pr. & vb. n. Creaking.] [OE. creken, prob. of imitative origin; cf. E. crack, and. D. krieken to crackle, chirp.] To make a prolonged sharp grating or squeaking sound, as by the friction of hard substances; as, shoes creak.

The creaking locusts with my voice conspire.
--Dryden.

Doors upon their hinges creaked.
--Tennyson.

Creak

Creak \Creak\, v. t. To produce a creaking sound with.

Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry.
--Shak.

Creak

Creak \Creak\ (kr[=e]k), n. The sound produced by anything that creaks; a creaking.
--Roget.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
creak

early 14c., "utter a harsh cry," of imitative origin. Used of the sound made by a rusty gate hinge, etc., from 1580s. Related: Creaked; creaking. As a noun, from c.1600.

Wiktionary
creak

vb. 1 (context intransitive English) To make a prolonged sharp grate or squeak sound, as by the friction of hard substances. 2 (context transitive English) To produce a creaking sound with.

WordNet
creak
  1. n. a squeaking sound; "the creak of the floorboards gave him away" [syn: creaking]

  2. v. make a high-pitched, screeching noise; "The door creaked when I opened it slowly" [syn: squeak, screech, screak, skreak]

Usage examples of "creak".

Moments later the subdued whistle of the engines faded and Dane could hear the structure of the ship creak around them as acceleration ceased.

The absolute silence of this seldom used dungeon was broken by a creaking sound, exactly the sound, he realised, of the handle to the door below that gave admittance upon the prisoners.

Besides the rustling of the gas cells there was the creaking of the aluminium framework along which he walked and the musical cries of thousands of steel bracing wires.

In each I could hear the arthritic creaking of the attic rafters as the wind pushed at the gables and pounded on the roof and pried at the eaves.

But Joe continued to crouch by the door and snarl, and suddenly Asey heard the unmistakable sounds of the dining - room entry floor boards creaking.

The stench of tar, the creak of timbers, the splash of the swell of an ice-cold sea, the incessant rocking all told him he was still a prisoner on the Azhkendi vessel, sailing ever farther away from Astasia by the hour.

The axial corridor began to creak loudly as the bearings changed their magnetic fields to act as a brake on the momentum of the tremendous wheels.

Those were always remarkably alike, every one seeming to be owned by a widow lady of formidable dimensions and creaking corsets, commanding a staff that consisted of her numerous beefy daughters.

So he suffered in silence, creaked miserably at his uprising and down-sitting, and was happily unaware that everyone in Billabong knew perfectly well what was the matter with him.

A second creak of metal and the trunk must have been opened, because suddenly, she could feel the rain on her blindfolded face.

Dodds clacking keyboard sounded more natural than the muffled burbling of the funnel or the squeals and creaks of the coaster.

Came clanks, rattles, splashes, yells, puffing of steam, creaking turns of the windlass, and a frenzy of running around, and a great cadenza of obscenity.

They were all creaking floorboards in the cellarage of the brain, inheritances from our eo-human days.

Another door on the left, varnished and dark: she imagines a censorious ear pressed against it from the inside, a creaking, as if of weight shifting from foot to foot.

Father Cesare as he rose stiffly from the chair amidst the popping and creaking of his joints.