(v. i.) To make a prolonged sharp grating or squeaking sound, as by the friction of hard substances; as, shoes creak.
(v. t.) To produce a creaking sound with.
(n.) The sound produced by anything that creaks; a creaking.
Example Sentences:
(1) The game also makes a lot of mileage out of building up razor-sharp tension, reducing the soundtrack to footfalls and creaking doors and then having horrific monsters amble into view as though this is the natural state of things.
(2) The hope is that they can drive 10-year Spanish bond yields out of the danger zone, take the pressure off the creaking Spanish banking system, and thus avoid the need for Madrid to seek formal help from the EU and the IMF.
(3) Your knees creak, your back aches and your fleshy bits droop more than they used to.
(4) Ending the unprecedented financial squeeze and returning to this historical average seems essential if we are to ensure that our health service is fit for the future.” “For almost six years, funding for both health and social care has not kept pace with the level of need.There have been many more hospital admissions, GP appointments and A&E attendances each year, so we should not be surprised that the NHS appears to be creaking under the pressure.
(5) Jesús Navas was a formidable opponent for the creaking Patrice Evra.
(6) Refugee crisis: Germany creaks under strain of open door policy Read more The DIW’s study based its calculations on 1 million refugees arriving this year, a similar number next year, and half a million each year until the end of 2018.
(7) Julian Savulescu , professor of practical ethics at Oxford University, said: "Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny.
(8) "I struggled, I tried to push him away, and it was only the fact that there was someone walking along the corridor and the floors creaked that he stopped and I managed to get away.
(9) The system is creaking at the seams even with the tiny number of current trial claimants.
(10) The Liberal Democrat business secretary might just have tried to go all the way – stretching creaking rules designed to protect "media plurality" – and so block News Corporation's proposed £8bn takeover of BSkyB amid worries about the power and influence of Murdoch's companies in the UK.
(11) And ageing is certainly a theme in the chat between live music (Norah Jones, Jamie Cullum) and guests (Sir Ian McKellan), with Wogan referring to himself as "an old cripple" and making jokes about creaking knees.
(12) For democracies, saddled with the creaking machinery of checks and balances, slow, incremental change is possible – but firefighting in a crisis is much harder.
(13) Bus and train operator National Express today won approval from investors to go ahead with a £360m rights issue designed to repair its overstretched balance sheet, creaking under debts of more than £1bn.
(14) Creaking joints aside, the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch is playing a key role in the promotion for the reunion.
(15) Although few in the Delta have noticed it yet, the freshwater of the Nile – which has enabled Egypt to survive as a unified state longer than any other territory on earth – is creaking under the strain of this population boom.
(16) Fifa 15 takes much better advantage of the PS4 and Xbox One’s number-crunching power, while finally ditching the legacy code from old consoles which could still be found in creaking away within Fifa 14's innards.
(17) And the “system”, the formula that has enabled so many people to successfully summit and the safety procedures that underpinned it, has started to creak.
(18) While a paying climber might travel through the treacherous icefall – a constantly moving, creaking, crevasse-riddled outflow of the Khumbu glacier – as few as four times, Sherpa climbers might make 30 or 40 journeys, carrying loads of oxygen, tents, food, water and fuel to the higher camps, a system that has evolved in the commercial era to give people who might not be the strongest, or the most experienced, the best chance of making it to the top.
(19) Accelerating wage inequality, together with a rise in economic insecurity, would sharpen the need to bolster our working-age welfare system at a time when it's already creaking and has few political friends.
(20) There were also rumours in 2007 that her marriage was creaking, and last August it was revealed that Douglas, with whom she has two children, had stage IV throat cancer.
Wreak
Definition:
(v. i.) To reck; to care.
(v. t.) To revenge; to avenge.
(v. t.) To execute in vengeance or passion; to inflict; to hurl or drive; as, to wreak vengeance on an enemy.
(1) Even digital news, which has wreaked havoc on all other news, finds the advertising revenues that support it dwindling (or failing to grow).
(2) Last month, for example, the Daily Telegraph's Peter Oborne bemoaned their "devastating" fate, in a piece worth quoting at reasonable length, if only to prove that the idea of an out-of-touch elite blithely wreaking havoc is not the preserve of hard-bitten lefties.
(3) It was a fairly valiant attempt from Manchester United , but as their players grew leggy from chasing shadows, they dropped deep and let Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery wreak their unique brand of havoc.
(4) Rajoy’s hope is that Sánchez’s failure in the upcoming investiture vote wreaks havoc inside the PSOE, potentially opening the door to a scenario that might favour him.
(5) Hardly any development funding for implementation has been disbursed.” 68 million children likely to die by 2030 from preventable causes, report says Read more Dr David Richmond, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said the series offered a “wake-up call to governments worldwide to make faster progress in reducing the number of stillbirths, which wreak untold damage on families, care givers and communities”.
(6) Six years later, as the cultural revolution wreaked havoc, young Xi was dispatched to the dusty, impoverished north-western province of Shaanxi to "learn from the masses".
(7) Chief executive John Walden said retailers have learned their lesson from last year’s Black Friday sales bonanza, which wreaked havoc on the high street and hit shops’ profits in the run-up to Christmas.
(8) Walk more Saño, who shot to fame in 2013 for breaking down in tears and fasting for two weeks at UN climate talks after typhoon Haiyan wreaked havoc in his country, is currently walking 1,500km from Rome to this year’s conference in Paris.
(9) These and other voters could also be attracted to the AfD by media reports that a strong showing for the party could wreak havoc with parliamentary arithmetic.
(10) But the US, Israel and other western spy agencies have also spent years slipping faulty parts into black market consignments of equipment heading to Iran – each designed to wreak havoc inside the delicate machinery requirement for enrichment.
(11) On the Apollo missions, lunar dust got everywhere – the crews inhaled it and got it in their eyes, and it wreaked mechanical havoc – and on Mars the dust is even more problematic, because it is highly oxidised, chemically reactive, electrically charged and windblown.
(12) It's also the product of the wider crisis of neoliberal capitalism that first erupted in the banking system five years ago and has since wreaked havoc on public finances, jobs, services and living standards throughout the western world.
(13) The tragedy is that there is a growing number of people in the Labour Party – perhaps even Ed Miliband – who believe that they can manipulate industrial unrest to wreak revenge for their electoral defeats.
(14) Accepting that a Greek default was now impossible to avoid, EU governments are hoping it will be brief and "selective", not triggering a "credit event" on the financial markets that could wreak havoc on the credit default swap markets, also in the US, and unleash contagion.
(15) The tobacco industry implies that the demise of tobacco consumption would wreak havoc with the economy.
(16) There wasn't some evil plan hatched behind closed doors to wreak socio-economic havoc.
(17) Photograph: Alderac Entertainment Group King of Tokyo Based on the public-domain dice game Yahtzee, King of Tokyo transforms players into giant monsters competing to wreak destruction on the Japanese capital.
(18) As temperatures warm,” he said, “things on higher elevations get warmer and things on lower elevations move up.” Bark beetles, once killed by cold winters, are now surviving and wreaking havoc with trees.
(19) The south-east of England is most at risk from these invaders which can prey on native British freshwater species, substantially alter the ecology of waterways and wreak economic damage by blocking water pipes, according to a new study by a University of Cambridge team.
(20) Rain and wind continued to wreak havoc across the UK this weekend, with south-west England and Wales battered by gusts of up to 71mph.