cricket
/ˈkrɪkɪt/noun
chirping insect; also a bat-and-ball sport
From O.French, possibly influenced by Germanic forms criquer (To creak).
Lineage
The story
The insect’s name seems to imitate the sound it makes: Old French criquer meant “to creak” or “crackle,” and criquet became a name for the little noise-maker. There may be a Germanic echo in the story too: a Middle English source connects the French word with Dutch and German relatives, though the transmission is not entirely settled. English first used “cricket” for the insect around 1500; earlier, it could refer to the fabulous salamander imagined to live in fire, perhaps because people associated crickets with the hearth. The sport’s name has a competing explanation: it may be linked to a Flemish-Dutch phrase for striking a ball with a curved stick, rather than to the insect. And when someone says “Jiminy Cricket,” the insect has wandered into a nineteenth-century euphemism for “Jesus Christ”—then, in 1940, Disney gave it a conscience and a top hat.
Modern usage
A person who is jealous, hostile, or prone to drama.
- Heard in
- online slang
- See
- Jiminy Cricket