1.
[syn: crawl, crawling, creep, creeping]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
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.
[1913 Webster]
Ye that walk
The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep.
--Milton.
[1913 Webster]
2. To move slowly, feebly, or timorously, as from
unwillingness, fear, or weakness.
[1913 Webster]
The whining schoolboy . . . creeping, like snail,
Unwillingly to school. --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
Like a guilty thing, I creep. --Tennyson.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[1913 Webster]
The sophistry which creeps into most of the books of
argument. --Locke.
[1913 Webster]
Of this sort are they which creep into houses, and
lead captive silly women. --2. Tim. iii.
6.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[1913 Webster]
5. To move or behave with servility or exaggerated humility;
to fawn; as, a creeping sycophant.
[1913 Webster]
To come as humbly as they used to creep. --Shak.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[1913 Webster]
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.
[1913 Webster]
8. To drag in deep water with creepers, as for recovering a
submarine cable.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Creeping \Creep"ing\, a.
1. Crawling, or moving close to the ground. "Every creeping
thing." --Gen. vi. 20.
[1913 Webster]
2. Growing along, and clinging to, the ground, or to a wall,
etc., by means of rootlets or tendrils.
[1913 Webster]
Casements lined with creeping herbs. --Cowper.
[1913 Webster]
Ceeping crowfoot (Bot.), a plant, the Ranunculus repens.
Creeping snowberry, an American plant (Chiogenes
hispidula) with white berries and very small round leaves
having the flavor of wintergreen.
[1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
creeping
n 1: a slow mode of locomotion on hands and knees or dragging
the body; "a crawl was all that the injured man could
manage"; "the traffic moved at a creep" [syn: crawl,
crawling, creep, creeping]
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
154 Moby Thesaurus words for "creeping":
all fours, ambling, amphibian, anguine, atiptoe, atmospherics,
batrachian, blaring, blasting, blind spot, cautious, cautiousness,
circumspect, circumspection, claudicant, colubriform, crawl,
crawling, creep, creeping like snail, crocodilian, deliberate,
deliberateness, deliberation, drawl, drift, easy, fade-out, fading,
faltering, flagging, foot-dragging, froggy, gentle, gradual,
gumshoeing, halting, hobbled, hobbling, honeycombed, idle,
idleness, indolence, indolent, inertia, inertness, interference,
languid, languor, languorous, laziness, lazy, leisureliness,
leisurely, lentitude, lentor, limping, lizardlike, lumbering,
moderate, nightwalking, noise, on all fours, on tippytoe,
on tiptoe, ophidian, padding, permeated, pokiness, poking, poky,
prowling, pussyfooting, reception, relaxed, reluctance, reluctant,
repent, reptant, reptatorial, reptile, reptilelike, reptilian,
reptiliform, reptiloid, saturated, sauntering, saurian, scrabble,
scramble, serpentiform, serpentile, serpentine, serpentlike,
serpentoid, shot through, shuffling, sidling, slack, slackness,
slinking, slithering, sloth, slothful, slow, slow as death,
slow as molasses, slow as slow, slow-crawling, slow-foot,
slow-going, slow-legged, slow-moving, slow-paced, slow-poky,
slow-running, slow-sailing, slow-stepped, slowness, sluggardy,
sluggish, sluggishness, snail-paced, snaillike, snakelike, snaking,
snaky, sneaking, staggering, static, stealing, strolling, swarming,
teeming, tentative, tentativeness, tippytoe, tiptoe, tiptoeing,
toadish, toddling, tortoiselike, tottering, trudging, turtlelike,
unhurried, viperiform, viperish, viperlike, viperoid, viperous,
vipery, waddling, worming