Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A straight bar of iron or steel, with the working end shaped like a chisel and often slightly bent and forked, used as a lever.
  • transitive verb To extract, remove, or insert forcibly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A bar of iron with a wedge-shaped end, sometimes slightly bent and forked, used as a lever or pry. Also called simply crow.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A bar of iron sharpened at one end, and used as a lever.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An iron or steel bar, often with a flattened end which may also be hook-shaped, to be used as a lever to manually force things apart.
  • noun An electrical circuit that prevents an overvoltage from causing damage.
  • noun A type of cocktail made with only Crown Royal whiskey and lemon lime soda.
  • verb To use force to move something

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a heavy iron lever with one end forged into a wedge

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[crow + bar.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From crow +‎ bar, probably because the forked end looks like a crow's foot.

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Examples

  • Grab the crowbar from the inventory and use it to open the crate.

    Archive 2009-01-01 2009

  • But a couple of young men stopped, took a crowbar from the boot of their car (yes, you might ask why they had such a tool available) took the drain cover off and rescued the duckling.

    When Ducks Attack 2008

  • Besides, the New York Times always uses the word crowbar to describe the schooling of prominent politicians ... just like they used cocain and alcohol to describe the life-student schooling of President Bush, who graduated from AA State at the young age of 40.

    NYT's Michael Powell Attacks Obama Ceaselessly 2008

  • 1 - Collect items: - antenna (thin, gray wire over the car's reflector) - tube (blue item under the car) - bucket (click the rope on the weel and then take the bucket) 2 - Take the crowbar from the bucket (click the little gray item in the bucket icon in inventory).

    Archive 2010-04-01 2010

  • Assuming that there are 40 million (or whatever the current uninsured number is) people who seek to be "employed," it is laughable to think that handing them a crowbar is the solution.

    Discourse.net: We Are Going to be E-Verified 2009

  • A crowbar might be a good weapon, he thought, but it was large to carry.

    Stranger in the House Patricia MacDonald 1983

  • Boring holes all over the surface of the beds with a crowbar is the common way of reducing a too high temperature, and when the heat has subsided sufficiently fill up these holes with finely pulverized dry loam.

    Mushrooms: how to grow them a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure William Falconer

  • Each of our five friends now took from under his cloak a crowbar, and in a minute they had forced open the great door.

    Ting-a-ling Frank Richard Stockton 1868

  • "Breaking icicles with a crowbar is a Stone Age method," Matviyenko said, calling on local scientists to think about new ways of removing them, including nanotechnology.

    The St. Petersburg Times 2010

  • "Breaking icicles with a crowbar is a Stone Age method," Matviyenko said, calling on local scientists to think about new ways of removing them, including nanotechnology.

    The St. Petersburg Times 2010

Comments

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  • As besotted cawing echoed into the night.

    December 3, 2008

  • Murderers and scavengers hangout.

    February 6, 2011

  • I'm not very convinced by this etymology.

    June 5, 2024

  • Crows use their curved beaks for leverage. The feet are just regular corvid talons.

    On the west coast, they'll open up clams and small crabs.

    June 5, 2024

  • So, a crow walks into a bar. And the bartender says ...

    June 5, 2024