creep
Noun · VerbWordNet 3.0
Noun (4)
- someone unpleasantly strange or eccentricSynonyms: weirdoweirdieweirdyspook
- a slow longitudinal movement or deformation
- a pen that is fenced so that young animals can enter but adults cannot
- 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”Synonyms: crawlcrawlingcreeping
Verb (4)
- move slowly; in the case of people or animals with the body near the ground“The crocodile was crawling along the riverbed”Synonyms: crawl
- to go stealthily or furtively“..stead of sneaking around spying on the neighbor's house”Synonyms: sneakmousepussyfoot
- grow or spread, often in such a way as to cover (a surface)“ivy crept over the walls of the university buildings”
- show submission or fearSynonyms: fawncrawlcringecowergrovel
Webster's Dictionary (GCIDE)
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]
1.The act or process of creeping. [1913 Webster]
2.A distressing sensation, or sound, like that occasioned by the creeping of insects. [1913 Webster]
A creep of undefinable horror.— Blackwood's Mag.[1913 Webster]
Out of the stillness, with gathering creep, Like rising wind in leaves.— Lowell.[1913 Webster]
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. [1913 Webster]
The Jargon File
To advance, grow, or multiply inexorably. In hackish usage this verb has overtones of menace and silliness, evoking the creeping horrors of low-budget monster movies.