nook and cranny
English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]nook and cranny (plural nooks and crannies)
- (idiomatic, with "any" or "every") A place or part of a place, especially one that is small, remote, or tedious to access.
- Everyone helped out to clean every nook and cranny of the house.
- Cleaning this equipment really isn't hard except that getting into all the nooks and crannies is time-consuming.
- 1966 [1858], Hans Christian Andersen, “Soup from a Sausage Peg”, in Pat Shaw Iversen, transl., The Snow Queen and Other Tales (Signet Classic; CT334), New York, N.Y.: New American Library, translation of Suppe paa en Pølsepind (in Danish), →OCLC, page 224:
- It’s strange to come away from home, from your own nook and cranny, to go by ship – which is also a kind of nook and cranny – and then suddenly be more than a hundred miles away and stand in a foreign land!
- [original: Det er underligt at komme hjemme fra sin egen Krinkelkrog, gaae med Skib, der ogsaa er en Slags Krinkelkrog, og saa pludselig være over hundrede Mile borte og staae i et fremmedt Land.]
- 2021 April 7, Christian Wolmar, “Electrification is a given... but comfort matters as well”, in RAIL, number 928, page 47:
- Ever since the post-war spread of the motor car, the railways have had to contend with tough competition, but have had an inherent advantage in the commuter and inter-city markets. Now they are about to face two new enemies - a technology that everyone has learnt to use and a virus that many people think lurks in every nook and cranny of the rail system.
Synonyms
[edit]- nook or cranny (negative sentences)
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]small or remote place
|