a large, strong box made of wood, plastic, or metal that is used for storing or transporting goods
Workers carefully loaded each crate of wine onto the truck.
The puppy sleeps comfortably in a small wire crate beside the sofa.
✦ From Middle English crate, from Latin cratis “wickerwork, hurdle.”
slang an old, worn-out car, aircraft, or other vehicle that is in poor condition
My first car was a rusty old crate that could barely climb hills.
The pilot joked that their ancient plane was a flying crate.
✦ Extended slang sense from the idea of a wooden box with poor handling qualities applied to vehicles (early 20th century).
to put something into a crate so it can be stored or shipped safely
They crated the sculptures before sending them to the museum.
We are crating the computers tonight so they're ready for the move.
✦ Verb sense from the noun: ‘to put into a crate’ first recorded in late 19th century.
A round, bowl-shaped hole in the ground or on the surface of a planet or moon, usually formed by a volcano, a meteorite impact, or a powerful explosion.
Astronomers studied the huge crater on the surface of Mars through their telescope.
The moon's grey landscape is covered with circular craters made by ancient impacts.
✦ Early 17th century from Latin cratēr ‘mixing bowl’, from Greek kratēr ‘bowl for mixing wine’—so called because a volcanic crater resembled a huge bowl.
A small, faint constellation in the southern sky whose pattern is said to resemble a cup.
Through the telescope, we located Crater just west of the brighter constellation Hydra.
Ancient Greek myths describe Crater as the goblet of the god Apollo.
✦ Latin for ‘cup’, adopted as a constellation name in classical antiquity because its stars form a roughly cup-shaped outline.
