A groove cut into the inside of a barrel's staves (wooden slats) near the ends to hold the barrel head or bottom in place.
From Middle English 'croze', possibly from Old French 'crouse' or related to 'crease' (groove). The term became standardized in cooperage (barrel-making) by the 15th century.
Cooperage vocabulary reveals how specialized crafts developed their own languages—'croze,' 'chime,' and 'bilge' are utterly unknown to modern speakers but kept coopers' knowledge alive for centuries.
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