crotchet

noun

1. A musical note one beat long in 4/4 time.

   “The crotchets and quavers are dancing up and down the stave like little black boys on a fence.”

2. (obsolete)A sharp curve or crook; a shape resembling a hook
3. (historical)A hook-shaped instrument, especially as used in obstetric surgery.

   “Either Doctor Denman or an old Woman would have waited—but since the horrid death-doing Crotchet has been found out, & its use permitted—Oh! many & many a Life has been flung away.”

4. (archaic)A whim or a fancy.

   “Thou who walkest in a vain shew, looking out with ornamental dilettante sniff and serene supremacy at all Life and all Death; and amblest jauntily; perking up thy poor talk into crotchets, thy poor conduct into fatuous somnambulisms; [...] dost thou call that "liberty!"”

   “He ruined himself and all that trusted in him by crotchets that he could never explain to any rational man.”

5. A forked support; a crotch.

   “Their little Shed, ſcarce large enough for Two, / Seems, from the Ground increas'd, in Height and Bulk to grow. / A ſtately Temple ſhoots within the Skies, / The Crotchets of their Cot in Columns riſe: [...]”

6. (historical)An indentation in the glacis of the covered way, at a point where a traverse is placed.
7. The arrangement of a body of troops, either forward or rearward, so as to form a line nearly perpendicular to the general line of battle.
8. A square bracket.

verb

1. (obsolete)to play music in measured time

   “The nimblest crotcheting musician”

2. (alt-of, archaic)Archaic form of crochet (“knit by looping”).