crisp
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /kɹɪsp/
text: -
rhymes: -ɪsp
Forms: form: crisps
form: crisping
form: crisped
form: crisped
Etymology: Partly from the following:
* Sense 1: crisp (adjective; see etymology 1).
* Sense 2: Late Middle English crispen (“to curl; of hair: to be curly”), from Old English cirpsian (“to curl, crisp”), from Latin crīspō (“to crimp; to curl”), from crispus (“of hair: crimped, curly”, adjective) (see etymology 1) + -ō (suffix forming infinitives of first-conjugation verbs).
Senses: examples: text: to crisp bacon by frying it
text: c. 1752, Elizabeth Moxon, English Housewifry, Leeds: James Lister, “To make Hare Soop,” p. 6,
[…] put it into a Dish, with a little stew’d Spinage, crisp’d Bread, and a few forc’d-meat Balls.
text: Eliza was fretful at his absences, and brought him his dinner crisped and dried from its long heating in the oven.
ref: 1929, Thomas Wolfe, chapter 17, in Look Homeward, Angel, New York: Modern Library, page 230:
glosses: Senses relating to brittleness.
To make (something) firm yet brittle; specifically (cooking), to give (food) a crispy surface through frying, grilling, or roasting.
synonyms: crispen
examples: text: It was the form of a man of middle age, the hair white, but the beard only crisped with grey,
ref: 1876 December, Margaret Oliphant, “The Secret Chamber”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume 120, page 718:
text: […] Monte Pellegrino, a huge, inordinate mass of pinkish rock, hardly crisped with the faintest vegetation, looming up to heaven from the sea.
ref: 1921, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “The Sea”, in Sea and Sardinia, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Seltzer, →OCLC, page 55:
text: The leaves of the chestnut were crisped with gold.
ref: 1925, Warwick Deeping, chapter 7, in Sorrell and Son, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, published 1926, page 66:
glosses: Senses relating to brittleness.
To add small amounts of colour to (something); to tinge, to tint.
examples: text: to put celery into ice water to crisp
text: […] the air chilled at sunset, the ground crisped, and ere dusk, a hoar frost was insidiously stealing over growing grass and unfolding bud.
ref: 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Briarmains”, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, page 206:
text: The dew is dried that drenched our hide / Or washed about our way; / And where we drank, the puddled bank / Is crisping into clay.
ref: 1895, Rudyard Kipling, “Letting in the Jungle”, in The Second Jungle Book, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, page 79:
text: Her hair feels fake, like a wig, but I think it is just crisping up under the dye and Frizz-Ease.
ref: 2007, Anne Enright, chapter 24, in The Gathering, New York: Black Cat, page 154:
text: […] the flick of the wrist with which one rolls the half-set wafer on to the handle of a wooden spoon and then flips it on to the drying rack to crisp.
ref: 2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, New York: HarperCollins, Part 4, Chapter 2:
glosses: Senses relating to brittleness.
To become firm yet brittle; specifically (cooking), of food: to form a crispy surface through frying, grilling, or roasting.
synonyms: crispen
examples: text: […] everything had become so still that the crisping of the snow under foot might be heard nearly half a verst round.
ref: 1860, Nikolai Gogol, “The Night of Christmas Eve: A Legend of Little Russia”, in George Tolstoy, transl., Cossack Tales, London: Blackwood, page 1:
text: […] the wheels [of the carriage] made their little crisping over the fine metal of the driveway.
ref: 1904, Harry Leon Wilson, chapter 10, in The Seeker, New York: Doubleday, Page, page 239:
text: 1915, Clotilde Graves (as Richard Dehan), “A Dish of Macaroni” in Off Sandy Hook, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, p. 39,
[…] her light footsteps and crisping draperies retreated along the passage,
text: The same peculiar crisping or crackling sound […] was heard this morning in every direction […] the ‘noise accompanying the aurora,’
ref: 1915, Elisha Kent Kane, chapter 16, in Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack, New York: Outing Publishing Company, published 1916, page 291:
text: […] the hot pavement by the playing field where the trees crisp together.
ref: 1938, Lawrence Durrell, The Black Book, Open Road Media, published 2012, Book 2:
text: Jericho had placed in my hand a glass in which the bubbles broke with a crisping sound.
ref: 1948 November, Max Brand, “Honor Bright”, in The Cosmopolitan:
glosses: Senses relating to brittleness.
To make a sharp crackling or crunching sound.
synonyms: crackle
creak
crunch
rustle
examples: text: […] those crisped snaky golden locks / Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,
ref: c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
text: 1609, Douay-Rheims Bible, 2 Chronicles 4.5,
[…] the brimme therof was as it were the brimme of a chalice, or of a crisped lilie:
text: 1630, Michael Drayton, The Muses Elizium, London: John Waterson, “The Description of Elizium,” The fift Nimphall, p. 44,
The Louer with the Myrtle Sprayes
Adornes his crisped Tresses:
text: […] the well known rhubarb of our gardens, with roundish crisped leaves.
ref: 1800, Thomas Pennant, “China”, in The View of Hindoostan, volume 3, London: Henry Hughs, page 172:
text: For a time I was made to forget that my skin was dark and my hair crisped.
ref: 1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 23, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York; Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […], →OCLC, part II (Life as a Freeman), page 360:
text: The mere story of their adventures […] on their road to and from school would have crisped a Western boy’s hair.
ref: 1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, chapter VII, in Kim, London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, →OCLC, page 176:
glosses: Senses relating to curliness.
To curl (something, such as fabric) into tight, stiff folds or waves; to crimp, to crinkle; specifically, to form (hair) into tight curls or ringlets.
examples: text: […] the crisped Brooks, / Rowling on Orient Pearl and sands of Gold
ref: 1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 237-238:
text: 1818, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 4, London: John Murray, stanza 53, p. 29,
I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream
Wherein that image shall for ever dwell;
text: […] when the breeze crisps the pool, you may see the image of the breakers, and a likeness of the foam.
ref: 1860, John Ruskin, chapter 1, in Modern Painters […], volume V, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part IX (Of Ideas of Relation:—II. Of Invention Spiritual.), § 14, page 204:
text: […] he saw a flying squall darkening and crisping suddenly the tide.
ref: 1916 December 29, James Joyce, chapter IV, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC, page 194:
glosses: Senses relating to curliness.
To cause (a body of water) to undulate irregularly; to ripple.
examples: text: […] he consider’d what an infinity of Muscles these laughing Rascals threw into a convulsive motion at the same time; whether we regard the spasms of the Diaphragm and all the muscles of respiration, the horrible rictus of the mouth, the distortion of the lower jaw, the crisping of the nose, twinkling of the eyes, or sphaerical convexity of the cheeks, with the tremulous succussion of the whole human body:
ref: 1741, Alexander Pope, chapter 10, in Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, Dublin: George Faulkner, page 82:
text: Phillotson saw his wife turn and take the note, and the bend of her pretty head as she read it, her lips slightly crisped, to prevent undue expression under fire of so many young eyes.
ref: 1895, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, New York: Harper, published 1896, Part 4, Chapter 3, p. 266:
text: […] a slow torsion and crisping of all his nerves, beginning at his ankles, spread to every corner of his body till he had to shut his fists and teeth against the blind impulse to leap from his bed screaming.
ref: 1914, Frank Norris, chapter 15, in Vandover and the Brute, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, pages 242–243:
text: Ah, here was a fellow coming! And instinctively he crisped his hands that were buried in his pockets, and ran over to himself his opening words.
ref: 1915, John Galsworthy, chapter 27, in The Freelands,, London: Heinemann, page 252:
text: They [the shark’s teeth] were shaped like a man’s fingers when they are crisped like claws.
ref: 1952, Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, New York: Scribner:
glosses: Senses relating to curliness.
To twist or wrinkle (a body part).
glosses: Senses relating to curliness.
To fold (newly woven cloth).
examples: text: The Sauoie Lettuce hath very large leaues ſpread vpon the grounde, at the firſt comming vp broade, cut, or gaſht about the edges, criſping or curling lightly this or that way, not vnlike to the leaues of garden Endiue, […]
ref: 1597, John Gerarde [i.e., John Gerard], “Of Lettuce”, in The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. […], London: […] Edm[und] Bollifant, for Bonham and Iohn Norton, →OCLC, book II, page 239:
text: […] a few shreds of purple bloom on a brown, crisping tuft of self-heal
ref: 1972, Richard Adams, chapter 50, in Watership Down, New York: Scribner, published 1996, page 417:
glosses: Senses relating to curliness.
To become curled into tight, stiff folds or waves.
examples: text: 1630, Henry Hawkins (translator), Certaine selected epistles of S. Hierome, Saint-Omer: The English College Press, “The Epitaphe of S. Paula,” p. 96,
Hitherto we haue sayled with a fore-wind, & our sliding ship hath plowed vp the crisping waues of the Sea at ease.
text: 1832, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters,” Choric Song, V., in Poems, London: Moxon, p. 114,
To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray:
text: […] the quick yielding of the waves that crisp and curl and ripple about my body.
ref: 1908, Helen Keller, “The Seeing Hand”, in The World I Live In,, New York: The Century Co., page 11:
glosses: Senses relating to curliness.
Of a body of water: to ripple, to undulate.
examples: text: […] she gave no sign of the wave of repugnance that swept over her except that her fingers suddenly crisped.
ref: 1935, Edgar Wallace, Robert G. Curtis, chapter 10, in The Man Who Changed His Name,, London: Hutchinson:
glosses: Senses relating to curliness.
Of a body part: to become twisted or wrinkled.
Derived terms: word: crisped
word: crisper
word: crisping
word: crisping iron
word: crisping pin
word: crisping tongs
word: uncrisp