krang

See also: kräng

English

Alternative forms

• crang, kreng

Etymology

From Dutch kreng (“a carcass”), from Middle Dutch crenge (“carrion, carcass”), compare with Old English crinċġan (“to fall, yield, cringe”). Cognate with Danish kreng (“a carcass”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɹæŋ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

krang (plural krangs)

1. The portions of a whale that remain after the blubber has been removed, especially the flesh and organs.
   • 1900, Andrew Barclay Walker, The Cruise of the Esquimaux, Steam Whaler, to Davis Straits and Baffin Bay, April-October 1899, page 47:

     Natives came 30 miles over the ice in two sleighs from Navy Board Inlet; hundreds of mollies following the ship all day for bits of krang and blubber.

   • 1907, Daily Consular and Trade Reports - Issues 2757-2805, page 14:

     The carcass of the whale, as left after the flensing, is cut to pieces on the platform and receiver for the krang, where krang and bone are elevated and placed in the krang boilers by machinery.

   • 1909, William Henry Giles Kingston, Peter the Whaler, page 199:

     The Mollies do not evince an amiable disposition towards each other; and as the krang ( such is the name given to the refuse parts of the whale ) is cut off, they were to be seen sitting on the water by thousands tearing at the floating pieces, and when one morsel seemed more tempting than another, driving their weaker brethren away from it, and fighting over it as if the sea was not covered with other bits equally good.

   • 2003, Frank Nugent, Seek the Frozen Lands: Irish Polar Explorers 1740-1922, page 164:

     The harpooner makes a cut across the neck and then down the body, taking care to take as little of the flesh - or 'Krang' as the body is called in whaling language – as possible.

2. (by extension) Anything that remains after flensing (not necessarily from a whale).
   • 1926, Hugh MacDiarmid, Penny Wheep, page 57:

     Sideways hurled The krang o ' a warld The sun has flensed Is lyin ' forenenst.