Library / English Dictionary

CREEP

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected form: crept   

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A slow mode of locomotion on hands and knees or dragging the body

Example:

the traffic moved at a creep

Synonyms:

crawl; crawling; creep; creeping

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("creep" is a kind of...):

locomotion; travel (self-propelled movement)

Derivation:

creep (move slowly; in the case of people or animals with the body near the ground)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A pen that is fenced so that young animals can enter but adults cannot

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("creep" is a kind of...):

pen (an enclosure for confining livestock)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A slow longitudinal movement or deformation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Hypernyms ("creep" is a kind of...):

change of location; travel (a movement through space that changes the location of something)

Derivation:

creep (move slowly; in the case of people or animals with the body near the ground)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Someone unpleasantly strange or eccentric

Synonyms:

creep; spook; weirdie; weirdo; weirdy

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("creep" is a kind of...):

disagreeable person; unpleasant person (a person who is not pleasant or agreeable)

Derivation:

creep (to go stealthily or furtively)

creepy (annoying and unpleasant)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Move slowly; in the case of people or animals with the body near the ground

Example:

The crocodile was crawling along the riverbed

Synonyms:

crawl; creep

Classified under:

Verbs of walking, flying, swimming

Hypernyms (to "creep" is one way to...):

go; locomote; move; travel (change location; move, travel, or proceed, also metaphorically)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "creep"):

formicate (crawl about like ants)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s PP

Sentence examples:

The crowds creep in the streets

The streets creep with crowds

Derivation:

creep (a slow mode of locomotion on hands and knees or dragging the body)

creep (a slow longitudinal movement or deformation)

creeper (a person who crawls or creeps along the ground)

creeping (a slow mode of locomotion on hands and knees or dragging the body)

Sense 2

Meaning:

To go stealthily or furtively

Example:

..stead of sneaking around spying on the neighbor's house

Synonyms:

creep; mouse; pussyfoot; sneak

Classified under:

Verbs of walking, flying, swimming

Hypernyms (to "creep" is one way to...):

walk (use one's feet to advance; advance by steps)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s PP

Sentence example:

The children creep to the playground

Derivation:

creep (someone unpleasantly strange or eccentric)

creeper (a person who crawls or creeps along the ground)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Grow or spread, often in such a way as to cover (a surface)

Example:

ivy crept over the walls of the university buildings

Classified under:

Verbs of walking, flying, swimming

Hypernyms (to "creep" is one way to...):

diffuse; fan out; spread; spread out (move outward)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Something is ----ing PP

Derivation:

creeper (any plant (as ivy or periwinkle) that grows by creeping)

Sense 4

Meaning:

Show submission or fear

Synonyms:

cower; crawl; creep; cringe; fawn; grovel

Classified under:

Verbs of walking, flying, swimming

Hypernyms (to "creep" is one way to...):

bend; flex (form a curve)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s PP

Credits

 Context examples: 

He crept up behind me and sprang upon me just as I had finished the note.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I have endured toil and misery; I left Switzerland with you; I crept along the shores of the Rhine, among its willow islands and over the summits of its hills.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Danger, Bertrand—deadly, pressing danger—which creeps upon you and you know it not.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It creeps over me amazin’ fast.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The southward creep of the Sahara suggests that additional mechanisms are at work.

(New study finds world’s largest desert, the Sahara, has grown by 10 percent since 1920, National Science Foundation)

The pull makes a glacier both slide on its base and deform, or "creep" - a slow movement caused by ice crystals slipping past one another under the pressure of the glacier's weight.

(NASA Finds Asian Glaciers Slowed by Ice Loss, NASA)

Then One Eye, creeping and crawling, every sense on the alert, every hair radiating infinite suspicion, joined her.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

What can you expect, when you take one's breath away, creeping in like a burglar, and letting cats out of bags like that?

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I had risen up in bed, I bent forward: first surprise, then bewilderment, came over me; and then my blood crept cold through my veins.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

In the jungle I crept forward, stopping with a beating heart whenever I heard, as I often did, the crash of breaking branches as some wild beast went past.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)