I Am Not a Crook

Aug 04, 2024

Crooked! The word sounds magical, almost like it’s been with us forever. It hasn’t, of course.

During my own lifetime, it has been virtually impossible to get away from the word crooked without thinking about Richard Nixon, our 37th President, who uttered the now-infamous words more than 50 years ago:

I am not a crook.

This was a denial that pretty much nobody believed, even Nixon’s own staff. It turns out that Nixon had sent burglars to break into the hotel room where the Democratic National Committee was headquartered. The criminals would sneak around in there at night, find either political dirt they could use against their opponents, or information about the DNC’s strategy in the ongoing Presidential race.

It might be fair to say that Nixon was, in fact, a crook, at least insofar as we understand the term today.

The more I say the word in my mind, the weirder it sounds. Try it with me for a minute.

Crook. Crooked. Crooks.

If you go back far enough, words have great stories. This word entered English simply enough, as an Old Norse word krókr, which meant a hook like a shepherd might use to help keep sheep in one place. Some time after the 12th century, folks began to use crooked as well, adapting the -ed ending that other English words used (winged, blessed, and so on).

It seems fairly likely that this adjective was a simple metaphor for the shape of the shepherd’s crook, so if something looked like this shape, we began to say it was crooked, or like a crook. This could be used to describe anything with a physical shape that was bent, like a crooked stream or creek.

Incidentally, you’ve probably noticing that creek and crook are suspiciously similar, and you’re right to notice that! Whenever this happens, there’s usually some kind of connection. Here, however, linguists aren’t 100% confident they’re the same word, due to similar words entering English from a multiplicity of sources.

It’s pretty easy to see how this literal meaning could have spawned a second metaphorical meaning. The very idea is pretty straightforward: if someone’s morals are bent, they are said to be ethically crooked.

Well, that’s what happened, but it wasn’t an overnight shift. In written literature, the word crooked in its modern sense can’t be found until the 18th century, and then not at all frequently until the late 19th century.

Why? Probably because printing had become widespread by then, and there was a critical mass of journalists writing and people who knew how to read, so that language was able to spread much more fluidly. It’s not so much that the corruption or crookedness was new, but instead that it was now possible to report on all of it.

It’s also notable that people are always hungry for new words. Any time we can repurpose an existing word and start using it for a metaphorical meaning, there’s a really good chance that word will take off and become very popular.

The word horny is one of my favorite examples of this. You can read what I had to say about it here if you’re interested: