1. [n]  an earthen jar (made of baked clay)
2. [v]  soil with soot
3. [v]  release color when rubbed, of badly dyed fabric

1. \Crock\ (kr[o^]k), n. [Cf. W. croeg cover, Scot. crochit
   covered.]
   The loose black particles collected from combustion, as on
   pots and kettles, or in a chimney; soot; smut; also, coloring
   matter which rubs off from cloth.
   

2. \Crock\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Crocked} (kr[o^]kt); p. pr.
   & vb. n. {Crocking}.]
   To soil by contact, as with soot, or with the coloring matter
   of badly dyed cloth.
   

3. \Crock\, v. i.
   To give off crock or smut.
   

4. \Crock\, n.
   A low stool. ``I . . . seated her upon a little crock.''
   --Tatler.
   

5. \Crock\ (kr?k), n. [AS. croc, croca, crog, croh; akin to
   D. kruik, G. krug, Icel. krukka, Dan. krukke, Sw. kruka; but
   cf. W. crwc bucket, pail, crochan pot, cregen earthen vessel,
   jar. Cf. {Cruet}.]
   Any piece of crockery, especially of coarse earthenware; an
   earthen pot or pitcher.
         Like foolish flies about an honey crock. --Spenser.
   

6. \Crock\, v. t.
   To lay up in a crock; as, to crock butter. --Halliwell.
   

[American scatologism "crock of shit"] 1. An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. For example, using small integers to represent error codes without the program interpreting them to the user (as in, for example, Unix "make(1)", which returns code 139 for a process that dies due to segfault).

2. A technique that works acceptably, but which is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least. For example, a too-clever programmer might write an assembler which mapped instruction mnemonics to numeric opcodes algorithmically, a trick which depends far too intimately on the particular bit patterns of the opcodes. (For another example of programming with a dependence on actual opcode values, see The Story of Mel.) Many crocks have a tightly woven, almost completely unmodifiable structure. See kluge, brittle. The adjectives "crockish" and "crocky", and the nouns "crockishness" and "crockitude", are also used.

[Jargon File]