creep

KREEP/kɹiːp/

20 meanings of creep

1
nounderogatorycolloquialcountable or uncountable
An unpleasant, eccentric person who makes others feel uncomfortable or repelled.
The new neighbor is a real creep who watches people through his window.
She called him a creep after he followed her home from work.
Similarcreeper
Note
Here the noun is a plain insult, informal and derogatory, for someone who makes others uneasy. It is usually aimed at someone else ("that creep"), but it can be turned on oneself, as in Radiohead's "Creep" (1992), where the singer applies the word and a second, similar insult to himself. Creeper, creepoid and creepazoid do the same job. When the unease is sexual, the word shades into the harasser's label.
2
verbintransitive
To move slowly and quietly in a chosen direction.
Soldiers creep through the underbrush to avoid detection.
She crept across the darkened room and slipped out unnoticed.
Similarsneak, tiptoe, steal, slink, edge
3
verbintransitive
To move in a stealthy or secret way, or to gradually work in and insinuate itself unnoticed.
A sense of unease crept through the crowd as the lights dimmed.
Spies creep into enemy camps under the cover of darkness.
Similarsteal, sneak, slip, spread
Note
Abstractions are the usual subjects here: old age, error, paranoia. The verb nearly always takes a preposition of arrival, such as creep into or creep upon, and the point is that nobody notices the moment of entry. John Locke in 1706 writes of sophistry that "creeps into most of the books of argument." Stephen Stills, in 1966, warns of paranoia stealing in the same way.
4
verbintransitive
To move slowly along the ground with the abdomen close to the surface.
Snakes creep silently through the tall grass toward their prey.
The infant crept toward the toy on his hands and knees.
Similarcrawl
Note
The oldest picture in the word: Old English crēopan, "to creep, crawl," goes back to a root meaning "to turn, wind," which suits the sinuous movement of snakes and lizards. Crawl is the near synonym, but creep keeps a note of slowness and quiet that later uses build on. The usual past is crept. Creeped also occurs, and crope survives only as an archaic past.
5
noununcountable
The gradual expansion of something beyond its intended goals or limits, viewed as a negative development.
Scope creep delayed the software release by several months.
Mission creep gradually turned a small relief effort into a full deployment.
Note
A noun that nearly always stands second in a compound: mission creep, feature creep, instruction creep, Christmas creep. The first word names what is spreading, and the disapproval comes built in. In this use it takes no plural and usually no article, so you write scope creep rather than a scope creep. It pairs naturally with the verb of gradual change.
6
nounderogatorycolloquialcountable or uncountable
A person who engages in sexually inappropriate behavior or harassment toward others.
Her coworkers warned her that the manager was a creep.
He turned out to be a creep who wouldn't take no for an answer.
Similarpervert, perv
7
verbintransitive
To change in small gradual steps, usually moving in a particular direction.
Interest rates creep upward whenever inflation begins to rise.
Her grades crept up steadily over the course of the semester.
Similarinch, edge
8
verbintransitive
Of a plant, to grow spreading across a surface rather than upward.
Strawberry plants creep along the ground, sending out new runners.
Moss crept across the damp stones near the stream.
Similarspread, trail, sprawl
9
verbintransitive
To feel a crawling sensation on the skin, as though insects were moving over the body.
The eerie silence in the hallway made her flesh creep.
His skin crept at the sight of the writhing maggots.
Similarcrawl, prickle, tingle
Note
The skin, not the person, does the creeping. The verb most often sits in the frame make someone's flesh creep, with flesh or skin as the subject and some sight or sound as the cause. Crawl does the same work, so "my skin crawled" and "my flesh crept" are interchangeable. Avoid making the person the subject: "I crept" means something else entirely.
10
nouncountable or uncountable
A small gradual change, variation, or deviation in a measurement from its intended value.
Engineers corrected for creep in the instrument's baseline before each test.
Over several months, creep in the calibration produced noticeable errors.
Similardrift, deviation

11
verbintransitive
To behave with servility or exaggerated humility in order to win favor; to fawn.
Courtiers learned to creep before the king, flattering his every whim.
She refused to creep to anyone just to advance her career.
Similargrovel, fawn, kowtow, toady, crawl
Note
Moral crawling: the body's low posture is borrowed for a servile manner. Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602) still keeps the physical bow in view, with suppliants who "creep / To holy altars." The present participle serves as a ready-made adjective of contempt, as in a creeping sycophant. In the verb, the person being flattered is introduced with to.
12
verbslangintransitive
To cheat on one's main partner by secretly having sex with someone else.
Everyone in the neighborhood knew he was creeping behind his girlfriend's back.
Friends warned her that he might creep the moment she left town.
Similarcheat, stray
Note
This is African-American Vernacular slang, and secrecy is its whole point: it borrows the stealth of the stealthy sense for infidelity. The other person is introduced with with, as in Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me" (2000), where the partner is a neighbor. The progressive is common, as in a 2003 Mario Winans song addressed to a lover who might be doing it. Keep it to casual speech. In neutral writing, cheat is the plain word.
13
verbintransitive
To slip or become slightly displaced, usually by a small, gradual amount.
The belt tends to creep whenever the machine runs at high speed.
The knot had crept loose during the long climb.
Similarslip, shift, drift, work
14
nouncountable or uncountable
A slight displacement of an object, or the small movement of something from its position.
A gradual creep in the rails forced repairs after the cold months.
The slight creep of the foundation worried the building inspectors.
Similarshift, displacement, slippage, movement
15
nouncountable or uncountable
The slow crawling motion of a creature such as a worm or snail.
The steady creep of earthworms keeps the soil loose and aerated.
You could barely see the creep of the slug along the wet path.
Similarcrawl
16
nouncountable or uncountable
The gradual deformation of a material under sustained stress, increasing as strain builds over time.
Turbine blades suffer creep when they operate at high temperatures for extended periods.
Engineers account for creep when designing structures that bear constant loads.
Note
Engineers mean something exact here: deformation that keeps increasing under a load that stays constant, even a load below the point at which the material would yield outright. Heat speeds it up, which is why hot-running parts such as turbine blades are designed around it. It is described in primary, secondary and tertiary stages ending in rupture. Time, not added force, drives it.
17
nouncountable or uncountable
The slow, barely noticeable downhill movement of surface rock and soil on a slope.
Soil creep gradually shifted the stone wall several inches downhill.
Geologists measured creep on the slope by tracking marked stakes year after year.
Note
Geology's slowest form of movement: soil and surface rock edge downhill under gravity over years, too slowly to watch. Soil creep is the common compound. It is read from its traces, such as tilted poles, bent fence lines and curved tree trunks. Unlike the engineer's creep, the cause is gravity acting on a slope, not stress building inside a material.
18
verbtransitive
To drag along the deep sea bottom with grappling hooks, as when recovering a submarine cable.
The repair ship would creep the ocean floor for miles to find the severed cable.
They crept the channel slowly, hoping to hook the lost anchor chain.
Similardrag, dredge, sweep, trawl
19
nouncountable or uncountable
In sewn books, the tendency of the inner pages of a folded section to project farther than the outer pages.
Designers adjusted the margins to counter the creep in the saddle-stitched booklet.
The thicker the paper, the more creep appears in a folded section.
Note
A binder's problem that grows with thickness. When sheets are folded and nested into a quire, each inner leaf has to wrap around the ones outside it, so its edge sticks out a little farther. Printers correct for this by shifting page content slightly during imposition, a correction known as shingling. Thick paper and saddle-stitched booklets show the effect most plainly.
20
nouncountable or uncountable
A barrier with small openings that lets smaller animals pass through while keeping larger ones out.
The lambs fed safely inside the creep, out of reach of the larger ewes.
A well-placed creep lets young piglets get extra feed without competition.
Note
A farmer's word for a selective gate. Its openings are sized so that young stock such as lambs, calves or piglets can slip through to extra feed while the adults stay out. The practice it makes possible is called creep feeding. As a countable noun, it can mean the barrier or the pen it encloses: you set up a creep, and the lambs feed inside the creep.

Practice

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Origin

From Middle English crepen, from Old English crēopan ("to creep, crawl"), which goes back through Proto-Germanic *kreupaną to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to turn or wind." It is related to Dutch kruipen, Danish krybe, and Swedish krypa. The noun is derived from the verb.