crib

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English [edit]

Crib
Corn crib (Carl Mydans, 1936)

Etymology [edit]

From Old English cribb (“manger, stall”), from West Proto-Germanic. Cognate with Dutch krib, German Krippe (“rack, crib”). The sense of ‘stealing, taking notes, plagiarize’ seems to have developed out of the verb.

Pronunciation [edit]

Noun [edit]

crib (plural cribs)

  1. (US) A baby’s bed (British and Australasian cot) with high, often slatted, often moveable sides, suitable for a child who has outgrown a cradle or bassinet.
  2. (UK) A bed for a child older than a baby.
    • 1848, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre.
      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.
  3. (nautical) A small sleeping berth in a packet ship or other small vessel
  4. A wicker basket; compare Moses basket.
  5. A manger, a feeding trough for animals elevated off the earth or floor, especially one for fodder such as hay.
  6. 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.
  7. A bin for drying or storing grain, as with a corn crib.
    • 1835, Washington Irving, A Tour on the Prairies, Chapter 35.
      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.
  8. A small room or covered structure, especially one of rough construction, used for storage or penning animals.
  9. A confined space, as with a cage or office-cubicle
  10. (obsolete) A job, a position; (British), an appointment.
    • 1904, Forrest Crissey, Tattlings of a Retired Politician.
      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.
    • 1893,— Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clerk”.
      but if I have lost my crib and get nothing in exchange I shall feel what a soft Johnny I have been.
  11. A hovel, a roughly constructed building best suited to the shelter of animals but used for human habitation.
  12. (slang) One’s residence, or where one normally hangs out.
  13. 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.
  14. (usually plural) A collection of quotes or references for use in speaking, for for assembling a written document, or as an aid to a project of some sort; a crib sheet.
    These cribs are taken from a Google on “foobar”.
  15. (obsolete) A minor theft, extortion or embezzlement, with or without criminal intent.
  16. (cribbage): Short for the card game cribbage.
  17. (cribbage): The cards discarded by players and used by the dealer.
    • 1814, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 2.1.
      “And that makes thirty-one; -- four in hand and eight in crib. -- You are to deal, ma’am; shall I deal for you?”
  18. (cryptography) A known piece of information corresponding to a section of encrypted text, that is then used to work out the remaining sections.
  19. (New Zealand, southern) A small holiday home, often near a beach and of simple construction.
  20. (Australia, New Zealand) A packed lunch taken to work.

Synonyms [edit]

Derived terms [edit]

terms derived from crib (noun)

Translations [edit]

a baby’s bed with high sides
a child's bed — see cot
a feeding trough for animals
a bin or box for storing grain
nativity scene
petty theft or plagiarism
notes concealed by a student to aid him/her in test or examination
a collection of quotes or references for use in speaking

Verb [edit]

crib (third-person singular simple present cribs, present participle cribbing, simple past and past participle cribbed)

  1. (transitive) To place or confine in a crib.
  2. (intransitive) 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.
    I cribbed the recipe from the Food Network site, but made a few changes of my own.
  3. (intransitive) To install timber supports, as with cribbing.
  4. (transitive, obsolete) To steal or embezzle, to cheat out of: petty thieving.
    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? — Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, 1848, Chapter 14.
  5. (India) To complain, to grumble
    • 1957, L.P.Hartley, “xi”, in Hireling, page 90:
      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.
  6. To crowd together, or to be confined, as if in a crib or in narrow accommodations.
    • Gauden
      Who sought to make […] bishops to crib in a Presbyterian trundle bed.
  7. (intransitive, of a horse) To seize the manger or other solid object with the teeth and draw in wind.

Derived terms [edit]

Translations [edit]

to plagiarize or steal

Anagrams [edit]

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