creep Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun someone unpleasantly strange or eccentric
    weirdy; weirdo; weirdie; spook.
  2. noun a slow longitudinal movement or deformation
  3. noun a pen that is fenced so that young animals can enter but adults cannot
  4. noun a slow mode of locomotion on hands and knees or dragging the body
    crawl; creeping; crawling.
    • a crawl was all that the injured man could manage
    • the traffic moved at a creep
  5. verb move slowly; in the case of people or animals with the body near the ground
    crawl.
    • The crocodile was crawling along the riverbed
  6. verb to go stealthily or furtively
    pussyfoot; mouse; sneak.
    • ..stead of sneaking around spying on the neighbor's house
  7. verb grow or spread, often in such a way as to cover (a surface)
    • ivy crept over the walls of the university buildings
  8. verb show submission or fear
    fawn; crawl; grovel; cower; cringe.

WordNet

Creep transitive verb
Etymology
OE. crepen, creopen, AS. crepan; akin to D. kruipen, G. kriechen, Icel. krjupa, Sw. krypa, Dan. krybe. Cf. Cripple, Crouch.
Wordforms
imperfect Crept (Crope obsolete ); past participle Crept; present participle & verbal noun Creeping
Definitions
  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.
    Ye that walk The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep. Milton.
  2. To move slowly, feebly, or timorously, as from unwillingness, fear, or weakness.
    The whining schoolboy . . . creeping, like snail, Unwillingly to school. Shak.
    Like guilty thing, Icreep. Tennyson.
  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.
    The sothistry which creeps into most of the books of argument. Locke.
    Of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women. 2. Tim. iii. 6.
  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.
  5. To move or behave with servility or exaggerated humility; to fawn; as, a creeping sycophant.
    To come as humbly as they used to creep. Shak.
  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.
  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.
  8. To drag in deep water with creepers, as for recovering a submarine cable.
Creep noun
Definitions
  1. The act or process of creeping.
  2. A distressing sensation, or sound, like that occasioned by the creeping of insects.
    A creep of undefinable horror. Blackwood's Mag.
    Out of the stillness, with gathering creep, Like rising wind in leaves. Lowell.
  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.

Webster 1913