Crowbar

Two crows walk into a bar.
After a few drinks, one of them says to the other, “It’s so noisy in here I can hardly hear myself caw.”
The other crow says, “Yeah, it’s murder in here. Let’s go.”
 
-o-
 
Anyway, what do crows have to do with crowbars? Not much, as it turns out.
 
The word crowbar is from 1748. Around 1400, the tool was simply called a crow, perhaps from its ‘beak’ or a loose resemblance to a crow’s foot. This seems like a stretch to me. The more plausible suggestion is that it comes from Old French cros or croc meaning a hook.
 
A crowbar is one of the few heavy-duty tools I know of that is made from just one part—a bar of steel. I think of how many hands over the centuries have shaped this bar of steel into what it is today. How many iterations have there been before workers said, “Yup, that’s it.”
 
Thanks to Lorna Crozier for the opening line of the joke.
Lorna Crozier. (2012). The book of marvels. Vancouver: Greystone, 29.
 
Reference: Online Etymological Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/
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