creep
Part of speech: verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
Topics: agriculture
business
geography
geology
lifestyle
media
natural-sciences
publishing
Etymology: From Middle English crepen, from Old English crēopan (“to creep, crawl”), from Proto-West Germanic *kreupan, from Proto-Germanic *kreupaną (“to twist, creep”), from Proto-Indo-European *grewbʰ- (“to turn, wind”).
Cognates
Cognate with West Frisian krûpe (“to creep, crawl”), Central Franconian kruffe (“to creep, crawl”), Dutch kruipen (“to creep, crawl”), Low German krepen, krupen (“to creep, crawl”), Danish krybe (“to creep”), Faroese krúpa (“to creep”), Icelandic krjúpa (“to kneel down, to genuflect, to get down on one's knees”), Norwegian Bokmål krype (“to creep”), Norwegian Nynorsk krjupa, krjupe, krypa, krype (“to creep, crawl”), Swedish krypa (“to creep, crawl”).
The noun is derived from the verb.
Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *grewbʰ-der.
Proto-Germanic *kreupaną
Proto-West Germanic *kreupan
Old English crēopan
Middle English crepen
English creep
Inflected forms:
form: creeps
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: creeping
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: crept
pos: verb
tags: past
form: creeped
pos: verb
tags: past
form: crope
pos: verb
tags: archaic
past
form: crept
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: creeped
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: crope
pos: verb
tags: archaic
participle
past
form: cropen
pos: verb
tags: archaic
participle
past
form: creeps
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: To move slowly with the abdomen close to the ground.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: Lizards and snakes crept over the ground.
One evening, while the Rabbit was lying there alone, watching the ants that ran to and fro between his velvet paws in the grass, he saw two strange beings creep out of the tall bracken near him.
Reed tips face the dawn
shivering in the autumn wind
At P'u-k'ou the winter tide
has not yet come
Sunrise on the sandy bank
pocked with narrow caves
Pale frogs and dark crabs
creep without end.
gloss: To grow across a surface rather than upwards.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To move slowly and quietly in a particular direction.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: He tried to creep past the guard without being seen.
Electrification of the Eastern Region main line from Strasbourg, incidentally, is steadily creeping nearer to Paris, and is now complete as far as Château Thierry, 59 miles away; [...].
She crept up the stairs, keeping well into the side because she knew they were less likely to creak this way.
gloss: To make small gradual changes, usually in a particular direction.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: Prices have been creeping up all year.
gloss: To move in a stealthy or secret manner; to move imperceptibly or clandestinely; to insinuate itself or oneself.
pos: verb
tags: idiomatic
examples: Old age creeps upon us.
[…]guard his understanding from being imposed on by the willful or at least undesigned sophistry which creeps into most of the books of argument.
Paranoia strikes deep / Into your life it will creep / It starts when you're always afraid / Step out of line, the man come and take you away
Midnight creeps so slowly into hearts of men / Who need more than they get / Daylight deals a bad hand to a woman / Who has laid too many bets
gloss: To slip, or to become slightly displaced.
pos: verb
examples: The collodion on a negative, or a coat of varnish, may creep in drying.
The quicksilver on a mirror may creep.
gloss: To move or behave with servility or exaggerated humility; to fawn.
pos: verb
examples: A creeping sycophant.
To come as humbly as they used to creep / To holy altars.
gloss: To have a sensation as of insects creeping on the skin of the body; to crawl.
pos: verb
examples: The sight made my flesh creep.
gloss: To drag in deep water with creepers, as for recovering a submarine cable.
pos: verb
gloss: To covertly have sex (with a person other than one's primary partner); to cheat with.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
slang
examples: Honey came in and she caught me red-handed / Creeping with the girl next door / Picture this we were both butt naked / Banging on the bathroom floor
I don't wanna know / If you're playin' me, keep it on the low / 'Cause my heart can't take it anymore / And if you're creepin', please don't let it show
"Now you want the nigga out 'cause he creeping with his baby momma."
gloss: The movement of something that creeps (like worms or snails).
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: A relatively small gradual change, variation or deviation (from a planned value) in a measure.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: A slight displacement of an object; the slight movement of something.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: The gradual expansion or proliferation of something beyond its original goals or boundaries, considered negatively.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: Christmas creep
feature creep
instruction creep
mission creep
gloss: In sewn books, the tendency of pages on the inside of a quire to stand out farther than those on the outside of it.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: An increase in strain with time; the gradual flow or deformation of a material under stress.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: The imperceptible downslope movement of surface rock.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: Someone creepy (annoyingly unpleasant), especially one who is strange or eccentric.
pos: noun
tags: countable
derogatory
informal
uncountable
examples: "You mentioned some others," I said.
"More creeps," she told me. '"That guy was plain looking for trouble. You know, he starts hanging out with some of the shooters Whitey Tass keeps around, angling for an introduction to the big man himself, and he's damn lucky he got picked up by the fuzz before Whitey got sore. He runs too big an operation in the city to be bugged by a pig like Yard. One day Lou Steubal tried to get an inside track with Whitey, levering him on account of what Whitey did to his sister, and they found Lou in the drink. It looked like Lou got gassed up and fell in, but don't try to tell me that. Whitey had him tapped out."
But I'm a creep / I'm a weirdo / What the hell am I doing here? / I don't belong here
[…]the catalyst was getting locked in the bathroom of her office with her landlord. "Two hours with that creep," she said. "You can't believe it[…]he got a ladder and came through the bathroom window and almost broke his balls on that pointed tampax box he made us buy. He brought hammers and screws and drills, but we were trapped. It got dark[…]He kept chipping away at the lock, and between the chipping he talked to me about his back and a couple of knee-operations. Finally someone tapped on the door from the outside and it opened, just like that.[…]"
"Why're you working your butt off for that creep? He takes your money, borrows your car, and treats you like shit. Can't you tell he's on drugs?"
"Outrageous!" said Tylan. "You know, without Fingers and baby Trev, we could have won."
"Yeah, Trevor, what a creep — running off home at half-time like that," said Frankie.
gloss: A person who engages in sexually inappropriate behaviour or sexual harassment.
pos: noun
tags: countable
derogatory
especially
informal
uncountable
examples: It was whispered that the priest was a pervert. Was he? The girls said he was a creep. I didn't quite know what it meant to be a creep, but it was obviously not a good thing. It was said that he sometimes fondled the girls, their breasts, and said lousy things to them, that they were beautiful or something like that.[…]Disgusting guys. I thought the guy at Bústaðir was a creep. An old man who liked to dance.
Saiera shuddered through an exaggerated shiver. "He's a creep. He was a creep in high school, and he's been a creep ever since. Look..." She flipped to the index, found what she was looking for, and fanned the pages until she reached the one she wanted. "Here he is.
A young Andy Gluck, chubby as a penguin, stared out of the page from behind round wire-frame glasses. A camera hung from a strap around his neck. […]
"He doesn't look creepy," I said. "Kind of nerdy, in a harmless way.
"Looks can be deceiving. See that camera? He was always going around with that camera, snapping pictures. Some girls caught him trying to get 'up skirt' shots while they sat at their desks.[…]"
gloss: A barrier with small openings used to keep large animals out while allowing smaller animals to pass through.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
Related words: cripple
Derived words: becreep
blue creeping gromwell
creepage
creeper
creephole
creep in
creeping barberry
creeping buttercup
creeping Charlie
creeping crud
creeping determinism
creeping disease
creeping elegance
creeping eruption
creeping featurism
creeping fig
creeping gromwell
creeping Jenny
creeping Jesus
creepingly
creeping normality
creeping sage
creeping thistle
creeping thyme
creeping water bug
creeple
creepmouse
creep on
creep out
creep up
creep up on
creepy
creepy-crawly
give someone the creeps
increep
make someone's flesh creep
make someone's skin creep
mopery with intent to creep
noncreeping
outcreep
overcreep
undercreep
upcreep
creepmeter
downhill creep
soil creep
creepfest
creepify
creepish
creep joint
creepo
creepshot
creepsome
creeptacular
creeptastic
creepware
Translations: