creeps

1. 1
   nounfigurativelyplural

   A sensation of fear, dread, or horror.

   Like the chill you feel watching a horror movie alone late at night.

   The abandoned asylum gave the whole crew the creeps.

   Something about his fixed, unblinking stare gave her the creeps.

   Similarwillies, shivers, horrors, heebie-jeebies

   Note

   Fear in this sense nearly always arrives inside two frames. Something gives you the creeps, or you get the creeps. The first makes the cause the subject, as when tarantulas may give some people the creeps. The second centers the person feeling it and often takes a following -ing clause: walking down that street. Like the skin-crawling sense, it keeps the article and stays plural.

2. 2
   nounfigurativelyplural

   A skin-crawling sensation, as though small objects or insects were moving across one's skin.

   Like the prickling you feel when you imagine bugs crawling over your skin.

   The damp cellar walls, slick with something unseen, gave him the creeps.

   She got the creeps the moment she felt phantom legs crawling up her arm.

   Similarwillies, shivers, heebie-jeebies

   Note

   Here the image stays close to the body: something seems to crawl over the skin, much as the verb creep pictures slow movement close to the ground. Like its sibling, it exists only as the plural with the article. You get the creeps; you never get a creep. This physical shiver is the bridge to the sense of fear or horror, where the crawling is felt rather than located on the skin.

3. 3
   noun

   Plural of creep.

   The neighborhood forum kept warning about creeps loitering near the school.

   She blocked all the creeps who messaged her after the photo went up.

   Note

   Only the countable uses of creep produce this plural. The negative sense of something spreading beyond its original goals or boundaries is uncountable, so it has no plural. The engineering sense of gradual deformation under stress and the bookbinder's sense can both be counted. With the article, the same spelling becomes the fixed phrase for dread, which never takes a singular.

4. 4
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of creep.

   The vine creeps along the garden wall toward the sunlight.

   Doubt creeps into her mind whenever the house falls silent.

   Note

   The present-tense verb usually takes no direct object. Something creeps along, into, up or across. Because its meanings describe slow, low or stealthy movement, it pairs naturally with a direction: ivy creeps across a wall, and doubt creeps into a mind. The identical spelling also serves the plural noun, so only the sentence around it shows which one is meant.

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