Word: crisp Part of Speech: verb Etymology: Partly from the following: * Etymology 2 sense 1: crisp (adjective; see etymology 1). * Etymology 2 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). Pronunciation: /kɹɪsp/, /kɾɪsp/, /kɹəsp/ 1. Senses relating to brittleness. Labels: transitive Example: to crisp bacon by frying it Example: 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. 2. Senses relating to brittleness. Labels: dated, figuratively, transitive Example: It was the form of a man of middle age, the hair white, but the beard only crisped with grey, Example: […] Monte Pellegrino, a huge, inordinate mass of pinkish rock, hardly crisped with the faintest vegetation, looming up to heaven from the sea. 3. Senses relating to brittleness. Labels: intransitive Example: to put celery into ice water to crisp Example: […] the air chilled at sunset, the ground crisped, and ere dusk, a hoar frost was insidiously stealing over growing grass and unfolding bud. 4. Senses relating to brittleness. Labels: dated, intransitive Example: […] everything had become so still that the crisping of the snow under foot might be heard nearly half a verst round. Example: […] the wheels [of the carriage] made their little crisping over the fine metal of the driveway. 5. Senses relating to curliness. Labels: dated, transitive Example: […] those crisped snaky golden locks / Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, Example: 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: 6. Senses relating to curliness. Labels: dated, figuratively, transitive Example: […] the crisped Brooks, / Rowling on Orient Pearl and sands of Gold Example: 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; 7. Senses relating to curliness. Labels: dated, figuratively, transitive Example: […] 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: Example: 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. 8. Senses relating to curliness. Labels: UK, dated, dialectal, transitive 9. Senses relating to curliness. Labels: dated, intransitive Example: 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, […] Example: […] a few shreds of purple bloom on a brown, crisping tuft of self-heal 10. Senses relating to curliness. Labels: dated, figuratively, intransitive Example: 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. Example: 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: 11. Senses relating to curliness. Labels: dated, figuratively, intransitive Example: […] she gave no sign of the wave of repugnance that swept over her except that her fingers suddenly crisped.