crotchet

1. (music) A musical note one beat long in 4/4 time.Examples: "The crotchets and quavers are dancing up and down the stave like little black boys on a fence."Synonyms: quarter note

2. (obsolete) A sharp curve or crook; a shape resembling a hookobsolete

3. (surgery, now chiefly historical) A hook-shaped instrument, especially as used in obstetric surgery.Examples: "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."historical

4. (archaic) A whim or a fancy.Examples: "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."archaic

5. (military, historical) An indentation in the glacis of the covered way, at a point where a traverse is placed.historical

6. (military) 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.