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A crowbar, also called a wrecking bar, pry bar or prybar, pinch-bar, or occasionally a prise bar or prisebar, colloquially gooseneck, or pig bar, or in Australia a jemmy,^[1] is a lever consisting of a metal bar with a single curved end and flattened points, used to force two objects apart or gain mechanical advantage in lifting; often the curved end has a notch for removing nails.

The design can be used as any of the three lever classes. The curved end is usually used as a first-class lever, and the flat end as a second-class lever.

Designs made from thick flat steel bar are often referred to as utility bars.

A common hand tool, the crow bar is typically made of medium-carbon steel, possibly hardened on its ends.^{[citation needed]}

Commonly crowbars are forged from long steel stock, either hexagonal or sometimes cylindrical. Alternative designs may be forged with a rounded I-shaped cross-section shaft. Versions using relatively wide flat steel bar are often referred to as "utility" or "flat bars".^{[citation needed]}

The accepted etymology^[2][3] identifies the first component of the word crowbar with the bird-name "crow", perhaps due to the crowbar's resemblance to the feet or beak of a crow. The first use of the term is dated back to c. 1400.^[4] It was also called simply a crow, or iron crow; William Shakespeare used the latter,^[5] as in Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 2: "Get me an iron crow and bring it straight unto my cell."

In Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe, the protagonist lacks a pickaxe so uses a crowbar instead: "As for the pickaxe, I made use of the iron crows, which were proper enough, though heavy."^{[citation needed]}

Types of crowbar include:^[6]

• Alignment pry bar, also referred to as Sleeve bar
• Cat’s claw pry bar, more simply known as a cat's paw
• Digging pry bar
• Flat pry bar
• Gooseneck pry bar
• Heavy-duty pry bar
• Molding pry bar
• Rolling head pry bar

• Halligan bar
• Kinetic energy penetrator
• Tire iron