Definition of "crake"

How still ! how very still it is, So silent it appears, E'en from its intensity, To tingle in mine ears. I hear the sheep-bell far away In the calm breathless night; The corncrake begins to crake . Crake, crake, with all its might.

1854 October, “MIDNIGHT IN JULY”, in The Kerry Magazine: A Monthly Journal of Antiquities, Polite Literature, Poetry, volume 1, number 10, page 159

'How very disagreeable!' said Annie; 'perhaps the birds took it in turn to crake.'

1872, Bertha E. Wright, Marvels from nature; or, A second visit to aunt Bessie, page 175

Of course, a corncrake, as its name suggests, likes to crake among the corn and hayfields, so that in fact you are unlikely ever to confuse it with the spotted crake, a bird to which dry land is almost anathema.

1951, The Listener - Volume 46, page 90

I hyred the to fyght agaynste Alexander, and not to crake and prate.

1526, The Hundred Merry Tales; Or, Shakespeare's Jest Book

Each man may crake of that which was his own.

1559, The Mirror for Magistrates

With him I threatned to be quite, and great things did I crake.

1600, Phaer's Virgil

And he that thus doth shal have smal pleasure in his awn rightwysnes, nor no gret lust to crake of his awn deserts or meryts.

1721, John Strype, Ecclesiastical memorials