crisp
See also: Crisp
English
Etymology
From Middle English crisp (“curly”), from Old English crisp (“curly”), from Latin crispus (“curly”). Doublet of crêpe.
Pronunciation
Adjective
crisp (comparative crisper, superlative crispest)
- (of something seen or heard) Sharp, clearly defined.
- This new television set has a very crisp image.
- Brittle; friable; in a condition to break with a short, sharp fracture.
- The crisp snow crunched underfoot.
- 1766, [Oliver Goldsmith], The Vicar of Wakefield: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Salisbury, Wiltshire: […] B. Collins, for F[rancis] Newbery, […], →OCLC:
- The cakes at tea ate short and crisp.
- Possessing a certain degree of firmness and freshness.
- 1820, Leigh Hunt, The Indicator
- It [laurel] has been plucked nine months, and yet looks as hale and as crisp as if it would last ninety years.
- 1820, Leigh Hunt, The Indicator
- (of weather, air etc.) Dry and cold.
- (of movement, action etc.) Quick and accurate.
- 2010 December 29, Sam Sheringham, “Liverpool 0 - 1 Wolverhampton”, in BBC[1]:
- Stephen Ward's crisp finish from Sylvan Ebanks-Blake's pass 11 minutes into the second half proved enough to give Mick McCarthy's men a famous victory.
- (of talk, text, etc.) Brief and to the point.
- An expert, given a certain query, will often come up with a crisp answer: “yes” or “no”.
- 1999, John Hampton, Lisa Emerson, Writing Guidelines for Postgraduate Science Students (page 130)
- Another way of writing the last example is 'She brought along her favourite food which is chocolate cake' but this is less concise: colons can give your writing lean, crisp style.
- 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XV, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
- It was plain that the loss of Phyllis Mills, goofy though she unquestionably was, had hit him a shrewd wallop, and I presumed that he was coming to me for sympathy and heart balm, which I would have been only too pleased to dish out. I hoped, of course, that he would make it crisp and remove himself at an early date, for when the moment came for the balloon to go up I didn't want to be hampered by an audience. When you're pushing someone into a lake, nothing embarrasses you more than having the front seats filled up with goggling spectators.
- (of wine) having a refreshing amount of acidity; having less acidity than green wine, but more than a flabby one.
- (obsolete) Lively; sparking; effervescing.
- c. 1612–1630, John Fletcher, George Chapman, Ben Jonson, Philip Massinger, “The Bloody Brother; or, Rollo. A Tragedy.”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1679, →OCLC, Act IV, scene ii:
- your neat crisp claret
- (dated) Curling in stiff curls or ringlets.
- crisp hair
- (obsolete) Curled by the ripple of water.
- 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
- You nymphs called Naiads, of the winding brooks […] Leave your crisp channels.
- (computing theory) Not using fuzzy logic; based on a binary distinction between true and false.
Derived terms
Related terms
Translations
sharp, clearly defined
brittle, friable
possessing a degree of firmness and freshness
|
of weather: dry and cold
of movement or action: quick and accurate
brief and to the point
of wine: having a refreshing amount of acidity
lively, sparking, effervescing
|
curling in stiff ringlets
curled by the ripple of water
comptheory: not using fuzzy logic
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
Noun
crisp (plural crisps)
- (British) A thin slice of fried potato eaten as a snack.
- 2016, Steve Coogan, Neil Gibbons & Rob Gibbons, Alan Partridge: Nomad, page 44:
- As I sit in front of the TV angrily eating crisps, it comes to me. I will challenge her to a race.
- A baked dessert made with fruit and crumb topping
- (food) Anything baked or fried in thin slices and eaten as a snack.
- kale crisps
Synonyms
- (thin slice of fried potato, Australia, Canada, US): chip, potato chip
Derived terms
Translations
thin slice of potato — see potato crisp
Verb
crisp (third-person singular simple present crisps, present participle crisping, simple past and past participle crisped)
- (transitive) To make crisp.
- Synonym: crispen
- to crisp bacon by frying it
- c. 1752 Elizabeth Moxon, English Housewifry, Leeds: James Lister, “To make Hare Soop,” p. 6,[2]
- […] put it into a Dish, with a little stew’d Spinage, crisp’d Bread, and a few forc’d-meat Balls.
- 1929, Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, New York: Modern Library, Chapter 17, p. 230,[3]
- Eliza was fretful at his absences, and brought him his dinner crisped and dried from its long heating in the oven.
- (intransitive) To become crisp.
- Synonym: crispen
- to put celery into ice water to crisp
- 1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter 8, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC:
- […] the air chilled at sunset, the ground crisped, and ere dusk, a hoar frost was insidiously stealing over growing grass and unfolding bud.
- 1895, Rudyard Kipling, “Letting in the Jungle” in The Second Jungle Book, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, p. 79,[4]
- The dew is dried that drenched our hide
- Or washed about our way;
- And where we drank, the puddled bank
- Is crisping into clay.
- 2007, Anne Enright, The Gathering, New York: Black Cat, Chapter 24, p. 154,[5]
- Her hair feels fake, like a wig, but I think it is just crisping up under the dye and Frizz-Ease.
- 2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, New York: HarperCollins, Part 4, Chapter 2,
- […] the flick of the wrist with which one rolls the half-set wafer on to the handle of a wooden spoon and then flips it on to the drying rack to crisp.
- (transitive, dated) To cause to curl or wrinkle (of the leaves or petals of plants, for example); to form into ringlets or tight curls (of hair).
- c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
- […] those crisped snaky golden locks
Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,
- 1609, Douay-Rheims Bible, 2 Chronicles 4.5,[6]
- […] the brimme therof was as it were the brimme of a chalice, or of a crisped lilie:
- 1630, Michael Drayton, The Muses Elizium, London: John Waterson, “The Description of Elizium,” The fift Nimphall, p. 44,[7]
- The Louer with the Myrtle Sprayes
- Adornes his crisped Tresses:
- 1800, Thomas Pennant, The View of Hindoostan, London: Henry Hughs, Volume 3, “China,” p. 172,[8]
- […] the well known rhubarb of our gardens, with roundish crisped leaves.
- 1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 23, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York, Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […], →OCLC, part II (Life as a Freeman), page 360:
- For a time I was made to forget that my skin was dark and my hair crisped.
- 1901, Rudyard Kipling, Kim, London: Macmillan, Chapter 7, p. 176,[9]
- The mere story of their adventures […] on their road to and from school would have crisped a Western boy’s hair.
- (intransitive, dated) To become curled.
- 1597, John Gerarde [i.e., John Gerard], “Of Lettuce”, in The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. […], London: […] Edm[und] Bollifant, for Bonham and Iohn Norton, →OCLC, book II, page 239:
- 1972, Richard Adams, Watership Down, New York: Scribner, 1996, Chapter 50, p. 417,[10]
- […] a few shreds of purple bloom on a brown, crisping tuft of self-heal
- (transitive, dated) To cause to undulate irregularly (of water); to cause to ripple.
- Lua error in Module:parameters at line 828: Parameter "url" is not used by this template.
- 1818, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 4, London: John Murray, stanza 53, p. 29,[11]
- I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream
- Wherein that image shall for ever dwell;
- 1860, John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Volume 5, London: Smith, Elder, Part 9, Chapter 1, § 14, p. 204,[12]
- […] when the breeze crisps the pool, you may see the image of the breakers, and a likeness of the foam.
- Lua error in Module:parameters at line 828: Parameter "url" is not used by this template.
- (intransitive, dated) To undulate or ripple.
- 1630, Henry Hawkins (translator), Certaine selected epistles of S. Hierome, Saint-Omer: The English College Press, “The Epitaphe of S. Paula,” p. 96,[13]
- 1832, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters,” Choric Song, V., in Poems, London: Moxon, p. 114,[14]
- To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,
- And tender curving lines of creamy spray:
- 1908, Helen Keller, “The Seeing Hand” in The World I Live In, New York: The Century Co., p. 11,[15]
- […] the quick yielding of the waves that crisp and curl and ripple about my body.
- (transitive, dated) To wrinkle, contort or tense (a part of one's body).
- 1741, Alexander Pope, Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, Dublin: George Faulkner, Chapter 10, p. 82,[16]
- […] 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:
- 1895, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, New York: Harper, 1896, Part 4, Chapter 3, p. 266,[17]
- 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.
- 1914, Frank Norris, Vandover and the Brute, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, Chapter 15, p. 242-243,[18]
- […] a slow torsion and crisping of all his nerves, beginning at his ankles, spread to every corner of his body till he had to shut his fists and teeth against the blind impulse to leap from his bed screaming.
- 1915, John Galsworthy, The Freelands, London: Heinemann, Chapter 27, p. 252,[19]
- Ah, here was a fellow coming! And instinctively he crisped his hands that were buried in his pockets, and ran over to himself his opening words.
- 1952, Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, New York: Scribner,[20]
- They [the shark’s teeth] were shaped like a man’s fingers when they are crisped like claws.
- 1741, Alexander Pope, Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, Dublin: George Faulkner, Chapter 10, p. 82,[16]
- (intransitive, dated) To become contorted or tensed (of a part of the body).
- 1935, Edgar Wallace and Robert G. Curtis, The Man Who Changed His Name, London: Hutchinson, Chapter 10,[21]
- […] she gave no sign of the wave of repugnance that swept over her except that her fingers suddenly crisped.
- 1935, Edgar Wallace and Robert G. Curtis, The Man Who Changed His Name, London: Hutchinson, Chapter 10,[21]
- (transitive, intransitive, rare) To interweave (of the branches of trees).
- 1938, Lawrence Durrell, The Black Book, Open Road Media, 2012, Book 2,[22]
- […] the hot pavement by the playing field where the trees crisp together.
- 1938, Lawrence Durrell, The Black Book, Open Road Media, 2012, Book 2,[22]
- (intransitive, dated) To make a sharp or harsh sound.
- 1860, George Tolstoy (translator), “The Night of Christmas Eve: A Legend of Little Russia” in Cossack Tales by Nikolai Gogol, London: Blackwood, p. 1,[23]
- […] everything had become so still that the crisping of the snow under foot might be heard nearly half a verst round.
- 1904, Harry Leon Wilson, The Seeker, New York: Doubleday, Page, Chapter 10, p. 239,[24]
- […] the wheels [of the carriage] made their little crisping over the fine metal of the driveway.
- 1915, Clotilde Graves (as Richard Dehan), “A Dish of Macaroni” in Off Sandy Hook, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, p. 39,[25]
- […] her light footsteps and crisping draperies retreated along the passage,
- 1915, Elisha Kent Kane, Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack, New York: Outing Publishing Company, 1916, Chapter 16, p. 291,[26]
- The same peculiar crisping or crackling sound […] was heard this morning in every direction […] the ‘noise accompanying the aurora,’
- 1948, Max Brand, “Honor Bright” in The Cosmopolitan, November 1948,[27]
- Jericho had placed in my hand a glass in which the bubbles broke with a crisping sound.
- 1860, George Tolstoy (translator), “The Night of Christmas Eve: A Legend of Little Russia” in Cossack Tales by Nikolai Gogol, London: Blackwood, p. 1,[23]
- (transitive, dated) To colour (something with highlights); to add small amounts of colour to (something).
- Synonym: tinge
- 1876, Margaret Oliphant, “The Secret Chamber” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 120, December 1876, p. 718,[28]
- It was the form of a man of middle age, the hair white, but the beard only crisped with grey,
- 1921, D. H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, New York: Thomas Seltzer, Chapter 2, p. 55,[29]
- […] Monte Pellegrino, a huge, inordinate mass of pinkish rock, hardly crisped with the faintest vegetation, looming up to heaven from the sea.
- 1925, Warwick Deeping, Sorrell and Son, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1926, Chapter 7, p. 66,[30]
- The leaves of the chestnut were crisped with gold.
Derived terms
Translations
To make crisp
|
References
- “crisp”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
- “crisp”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
Anagrams
Middle English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Old English crisp, cirps and Old French cresp, crespe, from Latin crispus.
Pronunciation
Adjective
crisp (plural and weak singular crispe)
Related terms
Descendants
- English: crisp
References
- “crisp, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
Noun
crisp (plural crispes)
Descendants
- English: crisp
References
- “crisp, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)ker- (turn)
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms inherited from Old English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English terms derived from Latin
- English doublets
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
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- Rhymes:English/ɪsp
- Rhymes:English/ɪsp/1 syllable
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
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- en:Theory of computing
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- en:Desserts
- en:Hair
- en:Snacks
- en:Temperature
- en:Wine
- Middle English terms inherited from Old English
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- Middle English terms borrowed from Old French
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- enm:Cakes and pastries
- enm:Fabrics
- enm:Hair