Crossword Dictionary

What's The Definition Of Creep?

\Creep\ (kr[=e]p), v. t. [imp. {Crept} (kr[e^]pt) ({Crope} (kr[=o]p), Obs.); p. p. {Crept}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Creeping}.] [OE. crepen, creopen, AS. cre['o]pan; akin to D. kruipen, G. kriechen, Icel. krjupa, Sw. krypa, Dan. krybe. Cf. {Cripple}, {Crouch}.] 1. To move along the ground, or on any other surface, on the belly, as a worm or reptile; to move as a child on the hands and knees; to crawl. Ye that walk The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep. --Milton. 2. To move slowly, feebly, or timorously, as from unwillingness, fear, or weakness. The whining schoolboy . . . creeping, like snail, Unwillingly to school. --Shak. Like a guilty thing, I creep. --Tennyson. 3. To move in a stealthy or secret manner; to move imperceptibly or clandestinely; to steal in; to insinuate itself or one's self; as, age creeps upon us. The sophistry which creeps into most of the books of argument. --Locke. Of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women. --2. Tim. iii. 6. 4. To slip, or to become slightly displaced; as, the collodion on a negative, or a coat of varnish, may creep in drying; the quicksilver on a mirror may creep. 5. To move or behave with servility or exaggerated humility; to fawn; as, a creeping sycophant. To come as humbly as they used to creep. --Shak. 6. To grow, as a vine, clinging to the ground or to some other support by means of roots or rootlets, or by tendrils, along its length. ``Creeping vines.'' --Dryden. 7. To have a sensation as of insects creeping on the skin of the body; to crawl; as, the sight made my flesh creep. See {Crawl}, v. i., 4. 8. To drag in deep water with creepers, as for recovering a submarine cable.
\Creep\, n. 1. The act or process of creeping. 2. A distressing sensation, or sound, like that occasioned by the creeping of insects. A creep of undefinable horror. --Blackwood's Mag. Out of the stillness, with gathering creep, Like rising wind in leaves. --Lowell. 3. (Mining) A slow rising of the floor of a gallery, occasioned by the pressure of incumbent strata upon the pillars or sides; a gradual movement of mining ground.