(v. i.) To make a low, hoarse noise in the throat, as a frog, a raven, or a crow; hence, to make any hoarse, dismal sound.
(v. i.) To complain; especially, to grumble; to forebode evil; to utter complaints or forebodings habitually.
(v. t.) To utter in a low, hoarse voice; to announce by croaking; to forebode; as, to croak disaster.
(n.) The coarse, harsh sound uttered by a frog or a raven, or a like sound.
Example Sentences:
(1) The first two experiments imply that stimulation of the skin of the trunk initiates the release croak; Experiments 3 and 4 suggest that an internal afferent source inhibits the release croak and might mediate an important aspect of receptivity in female frogs.
(2) The cathartic moment, in which the king realises he's OK and lovable just as he is, was wonderful for the film-makers to discover, and has been wonderful for worldwide audiences ever since (and the king doesn't die… he merely "croaks").
(3) Poppies in the long grass, frogs croaking for mates, wasps droning lazily at the window, tomatoes and strawberries ripening in garden pots and crickets buzzing at dusk: these are the sights and sounds of an English summer.
(4) We are all getting older thanks to better living conditions, and the French are way older than they have any right to be considering their diet, but the dependable Swedes who have always been goody-goodies are still croaking in their 80s, so most of us will have to settle for that.
(5) And so they hardly ever leave a flat in which, thanks to the croaking boiler, the temperature hovers around 10 degrees.
(6) With drugs, oblivious, in a basement, frozen nobly on a mountain top, screaming in a car crash, or traditionally in a bed surrounded by our family and children, croaking out our last wishes?
(7) "Intelligent tadpoles reconcile themselves to the inconvenience of their position by reflecting that although most of them will live to be tadpoles and nothing more, the most fortunate of the species will one day shed their tails, distend their mouths and stomachs, hop nimbly on to dry land and croak addresses to their former friends on the virtue by which tadpoles of character and capacity can rise to be frogs."
(8) Three decades later, in July 2011, to watch a slightly pasty, croaking, self-styled "humble" Murdoch appear before a televised committee of suddenly irreverent MPs was to see something dragged out into the light: a power relationship that would never be quite the same again.
(9) Talked a lot about Under Milk Wood: how he came to London in 1953, with a fiver in his pocket, and went in search of Dylan Thomas in the Soho and Fitzrovia pubs, only to find that he had just croaked in New York.
(10) But as the fearless Ali strutted on, inventing new ways, new scenes, new angles, new endings, those croaking pronouncements of veterans petered out.
(11) The only MacTaggarts regularly recalled with relish are those in which all-powerful television grandees were venomously slagged off in public - Dennis Potter's attack on the then BBC director general John Birt as a "croak-voiced Dalek" in 1993, and Michael Grade's escalation of his own feud with Birt the previous year.
(12) I learn to distinguish the croaks of the marsh frog from the scratchy cry of the reed warbler and watch brightly coloured damselflies darting about in the bullrushes.
(13) This report investigates the sources of stimuli which initiate and inhibit the release croak of Rana pipiens.
(14) It can be a surprisingly noisy place, what with the barking of the muntjac deer, the croaking of the frogs, the quacking of the widgeons … Look and listen out for Faint lights near the ground, especially in June and July.
(15) Cool off after a hot day on the beach in the natural swimming pond, complete with lily pads and croaking frogs.
(16) At the moment the city also sounds like seagulls croaking at each other from outside my window from about 3am every morning.
(17) Roger no longer expresses a desire to croak it prematurely although he is 69 years old now and back on the road.
(18) Even if it was in a husky croak, and I couldn't manage the chorus.
(19) There was no trace of human life, only the croak of a raven and a trickling stream.
(20) The pectoral fin of the croaking gourami, Trichopsis vittatus, has become modified as a sound-producing organ and retains its original function in locomotion and hovering.
Toad
Definition:
(n.) Any one of numerous species of batrachians belonging to the genus Bufo and allied genera, especially those of the family Bufonidae. Toads are generally terrestrial in their habits except during the breeding season, when they seek the water. Most of the species burrow beneath the earth in the daytime and come forth to feed on insects at night. Most toads have a rough, warty skin in which are glands that secrete an acrid fluid.
Example Sentences:
(1) A golden toad (Bufo periglenes) in Monteverde Cloud forest reserve in Puntarenas province of Costa Rica.
(2) Resting plasma epinephrine and norepinephrine levels were 13.1 and 2.1 nmol liter-1 for the marine toad (Bufo marinus).
(3) A study was made of the innervation of the longitudinal muscle of the toad ileum with particular emphasis on the splanchnic innervation by non-adrenergic, non-cholinergic (NANC) nerves.
(4) These results indicate that GE decreases active Na transport in the toad skin.
(5) Fenoterol significantly increased toad skin oxygen consumption and net Na+ movement across the skin due to an increase in Na+ flux from mucosa to serosa.
(6) We attempted to distinguish between these 2 possibilities by studying paired toad bladders during 3 protocols that alter vasopressin-stimulated water flow across the intact tissue without altering aggregate frequency.
(7) In IDD patients the ultrafiltrates were active in the TTC assay and in the toad assay.
(8) About 2 weeks after metamorphosis, midwife toads Alytes obstetricans judge the size of a prey object mainly in scales of visual angle.
(9) However, we also demonstrate that published data show the existence of strong nonlinearities in the single-photon responses of toad and perhaps also of locust.
(10) A photoreactive analogue of vasotocin, [1-desamino,4-lysine(azidobenzoyl),8-arginine]vasotocin (4-N3-AVT), has been examined in the isolated toad urinary bladder for biological activity and binding to hormonal receptors.
(11) Earlier studies have shown that a substance(s) released from the egg jelly of the toad Bufo arenarum is required for fertilization.
(12) Commenters on his blog posted numerous fotozhaby – literally, photo-toads, or montages – in pastiche of the sham image.
(13) Schematic eyes, with homogeneous and non homogeneous lenses, were constructed for tadpoles, juvenile toads, and adult toads.
(14) Bidirectional sodium fluxes were measured across toad bladder sacs after eliminating active transport with ouabain.
(15) The properties of hyperpolarization-activated channels were studied in single smooth muscle cells from the stomach of the toad, Bufo marinus, using the patch-clamp technique.
(16) Findings from toad urinary bladder, Necturus gallbladder, and rabbit cortical collecting tubule are reviewed.
(17) The chronotropic and inotropic effects of stimulating the vagus on the hearts of the dog, duck and toad were studied.2.
(18) The inhibition of osmotic stimulated water flow in the isolated toad bladder by 0.1 mM sodium stibogluconate (pentavalent antimony) is described.
(19) Other than snake venoms, only venoms of the toad Bufo calamita and the lizards were hemorrhagic, and only venoms of the social wasps, social bees and harvester ant exhibited strong anticoagulant activity.
(20) By analogy with the comparable glands of the yellow-bellied toad and the grass frog, these are called the toxic, lumpy, mucous, callous, and small glands.