crib
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: computing
cryptography
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
nautical
physical-sciences
sciences
transport
Etymology: From Middle English crib, cribbe, from Old English crib, cryb, cribb, crybb (“couch, bed; manger, stall”), from Proto-West Germanic *kribbjā, from Proto-Germanic *kribjǭ (“crib, wickerwork”), from Proto-Indo-European *grebʰ-, *gerbʰ- (“bunch, bundle, tuft, clump”), from *ger- (“to turn, twist”).
Cognate with Saterland Frisian Kräbbe, Krääb, Krääf (“crib”), West Frisian krêbe (“crib”), Dutch krib (“crib, manger”), German Krippe (“rack, crib”), Danish krybbe (“crib”), Icelandic krubba (“crib”). Doublet of crèche. The sense of ‘stealing, taking notes, plagiarize’ seems to have developed out of the verb.
The criminal sense may derive from the 'basket' sense, circa the mid 18th century, in that a poacher could conceal poachings in such a basket (see the 1772 Samuel Foote quotation). The cheating sense probably derives from the criminal sense.
Inflected forms:
form: cribs
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: cribs
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: cribbing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: cribbed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: cribbed
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A baby’s bed with high, often slatted, often moveable sides, suitable for a child who has outgrown a cradle or bassinet.
pos: noun
tags: US
countable
uncountable
examples: In two minutes I was kneeling by the child’s crib, and Sandy was dispatching servants here, there, and everywhere, all over the palace. I took in the situation almost at a glance -- membranous croup!
gloss: A bed for a child older than a baby.
pos: noun
tags: UK
countable
uncountable
examples: a day or two afterwards I learned that Miss Temple, on returning to her own room at dawn, had found me laid in the little crib; my face against Helen Burns’s shoulder, my arms round her neck. I was asleep, and Helen was -- dead.
gloss: A small sleeping berth in a packet or other small vessel.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: A wicker basket.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: A manger, a feeding trough for animals elevated off the earth or floor, especially one for fodder such as hay.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: The baby Jesus and the manger in a creche or nativity scene, consisting of statues of Mary, Joseph and various other characters such as the magi.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: A bin for drying or storing grain, such as a corn crib.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: I began to think of my horse. He, however, like an old campaigner, had taken good care of himself. I found him paying assiduous attention to the crib of Indian corn, and dexterously drawing forth and munching the ears that protruded between the bars.
gloss: A small room or covered structure, especially one of rough construction, used for storage or penning animals.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: A kitchen, a meat-house, a dairy, a crib with two stalls in the rear, one for the horse the other for the cow, were the out-buildings
Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox.
gloss: A confined space, such as a cage or office cubicle.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: The singers were in a crib of wirework (like a large meat-safe or bird-cage) in one corner
gloss: A job, a position; (UK) an appointment.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
examples: He had seen so many lean years of faithful service when the enemy held the corner on all the official cribs that, now in the days of his party’s fatness and of his own righteous reward, the habit of good, honest hustling stuck to him, and he lined up an array of pulls and indorsements that made him swell with happiness every time he went over the list.
but if I have lost my crib and get nothing in exchange I shall feel what a soft Johnny I have been.
gloss: A hovel, a roughly constructed building best suited to the shelter of animals but used for human habitation.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, / Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, / And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, / Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
gloss: A boxy structure traditionally built of heavy wooden timbers, to support an existing structure from below, as with a mineshaft or a building being raised off its foundation in preparation for being moved; see cribbing.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: A collection of quotes or references for use in speaking, for assembling a written document, or as an aid to a project of some sort; a crib sheet.
pos: noun
tags: countable
plural-normally
uncountable
gloss: A minor theft, extortion or embezzlement, with or without criminal intent.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
gloss: The card game cribbage.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: “May we play crib, Mrs. Radford?” he asked.
gloss: The cards discarded by players and used by the dealer, akin to the kitty or widow in other card games.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: The cards were brought and Fanny played at cribbage with her aunt till bed-time; and as Sir Thomas was reading to himself, no sounds were heard in the room for the next two hours beyond the reckonings of the game—And that makes thirty-one, four in hand and eight in crib.
gloss: A known piece of information corresponding to a section of encrypted text, that is then used to work out the remaining sections.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
gloss: A small holiday home, often near a beach and of simple construction.
pos: noun
tags: New-Zealand
Southern
countable
uncountable
gloss: A snack or packed lunch, especially as taken to work to eat during a break.
pos: noun
tags: Australia
New-Zealand
countable
uncountable
examples: He ate a thick square of banana cake from his crib and stared into the fire.
gloss: A small raft made of timber.
pos: noun
tags: Canada
countable
uncountable
gloss: The stomach.
pos: noun
tags: UK
countable
obsolete
uncountable
examples: Here's Pannum and Lap, and good Poplars of Yarrum, / To fill up the Crib, and to comfort the Quarron.
gloss: A literal translation, usually of a work originally in Latin or Ancient Greek.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: [On Chapman's use of a Latin literal translation of Homer] As will appear, he blocked out his translation from the Latin crib, keeping one eye uneasily on the Greek, and, enlightened by Scapula or by his own poetic intuition, worked out his own rendering, often marking the departure from the Latin by a defiant note in the margin or commentary.
gloss: A cheat sheet or past test used by students; crib sheet.
pos: noun
tags: countable
slang
uncountable
gloss: One’s residence, house or dwelling place, or usual place of resort.
pos: noun
tags: countable
slang
uncountable
examples: Why, you would not be boosing till lightman's in a square crib like mine, as if you were in a flash panny?
Toby and me were over the garden-wall the night afore last, sounding the panels of the door and shutters. The crib's barred up at night like a jail; but there's one part we can crack, safe and softly.
My flow, my show brought me the dough / That bought me all my fancy things / My crib, my cars, my pools, my jewels.
I knew every inch ofthis joint. I had come of age up in here, and it was more of a home to me than the crib where I rested my head each night.
Franklin Clinton (Shawn Fonteno): Eh stop shootin' rockets at my crib!"
gloss: To place or confine in a crib.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: They may go to their beds and give themselves no trouble about their work, and yet in the morning the maids will find the kitchen swept up, and water brought in, and the men will find the horses in the stable well cleaned and curried, and perhaps a supply corn cribbed for them from the neighbours barns.
gloss: To shut up or confine in a narrow habitation; to cage; to cramp.
pos: verb
examples: if only the vital energy be not cribbed or cramped
But now I am cabin'd, cribbed, confined, bound in, / To saucy doubts and fears
gloss: To collect one or more passages and/or references for use in a speech, written document or as an aid for some task; to create a crib sheet.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: I cribbed the recipe from the Food Network site, but made a few changes of my own.
gloss: To plagiarize; to copy; to cheat.
pos: verb
tags: informal
transitive
examples: He then proceeded to patch his tags together with the help of his Gradus, producing an incongruous and feeble result of eight elegiac lines, the minimum quantity for his form, and finishing up with two highly moral lines extra, making ten in all, which he cribbed entire from one of his books, beginning "O genus humanum," and which he himself must have used a dozen times before, whenever an unfortunate or wicked hero, of whatever nation or language under the sun, was the subject.
This subplot—as well as a few other threads that have been teased from the Star Wars saga’s next installment—prompts another question: just how much of this film’s plot will be cribbed from The Empire Strikes Back?
gloss: To install timber supports, as with cribbing.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To steal or embezzle.
pos: verb
tags: archaic
transitive
examples: There are a brace of birds and hare, that I cribbed this morning out of a basket of game.
It was very easy, Briggs said, to make a galley-slave of a boy all the half-year, and then score him up idle; and to crib two dinners a-week out of his board, and then score him up greedy; but that wasn’t going to be submitted to, he believed, was it?
"Somebody crib the mayor's crown jools, or has some joyous cuss eloped with the auto patrol?"
gloss: To complain, to grumble
pos: verb
tags: India
examples: She calls on the neighbours, she's out half the time and doesn't answer the telephone, and when I start cribbing she just laughs.
gloss: To crowd together, or to be confined, as if in a crib or in narrow accommodations.
pos: verb
examples: […] who ſought to make the glory of the Nation and Church of England, which was ever Regal and Epiſcopal ſince it was Chriſtian, truckle under a Scotch Canopy, and to make Biſhops to crib in a Presbyterian trundle-bed; as much as Kingly Majeſtie, to be confounded with Democracy.
gloss: To seize the manger or other solid object with the teeth and draw in wind.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To use a known piece of information corresponding to a section of encrypted text, to work out the remaining sections.
pos: verb
Derived words: cribber
crib note
crib sheet
Translations: