/kɹɪmp/
OriginFrom Middle English crimpen (“to be contracted, be drawn together”), from Middle Dutch crimpen, crempen (“to crimp”), from Proto-Germanic *krimpaną (“to shrink, draw back”) (compare related Old English ġecrympan (“to curl”)). Cognate with Dutch krimpen, German Low German krimpen, Faroese kreppa (“crisis”), and Icelandic kreppa (“to bend tightly, clench”). Compare also derivative Middle English crymplen (“to wrinkle”) and causative crempen (“to turn something back, restrain”, literally “to cause to shrink or draw back”), both ultimately derived from the same root. See also cramp.
- obsoleteEasily crumbled; friable; brittle.
“Now the Fowler […] Treads the crimp Earth,”
- obsoleteWeak; inconsistent; contradictory.
“The evidence is crimp; the witnesses swear backward and forward, and contradict themselves”
- A fastener or a fastening method that secures parts by bending metal around a joint and squeezing it together, often with a tool that adds indentations to capture the parts.
“The strap was held together by a simple metal crimp.”
- The natural curliness of wool fibres.
- plural-normallyHair that is shaped so it bends back and forth in many short kinks.
- obsoleteA card game.
“Lady Loadstone: Laugh, and keep company, at gleek or crimp. / Mistress Polish: Your ladyship says right, crimp sure will cure her.”
- A small hold with little surface area.
- A grip on such a hold.
- An agent who procures seamen, soldiers, etc., especially by decoying, entrapping, impressing, or seducing them.
“Indeed, when a maſter of a ſhip, ſuppoſe at Jamaica, hath loſt any of his hands, he applies of courſe to a crimp[…]who makes it his buſineſs to ſeduce the men belonging to ſome other ſhip,”
“Walking the street very hungry, and not knowing what to do with himself, a crimp's bill was put into his hand, offering immediate entertainment and encouragement to such as would bind themselves to se”
“Among his men I recollected one Cordus, a gentleman's ſon from Hamburgh, in which character I had known him, and who had been trepanned into the Weſt India Company's ſervice by the crimps or ſilver-co”
- specificallyOne who infringes sub-section 1 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1854, applied to a person other than the owner, master, etc., who engages seamen without a license from the Board of Trade.
- obsoleteA keeper of a low lodging house where sailors and emigrants are entrapped and fleeced.
- To press into small ridges or folds, to pleat, to corrugate.
“Cornish pasties are crimped during preparation.”
“Casino employees and Gaming Control Board agents placed the table under observation. The deck in play was exchanged for a new deck, and the used deck was found to contain many crimped cards.”
- To fasten by bending metal so that it squeezes around the parts to be fastened.
“He crimped the wire in place.”
- To pinch and hold; to seize.
- To style hair into a crimp, to form hair into tight curls, to make it kinky.
- To bend or mold leather into shape.
- To gash the flesh, e.g. of a raw fish, to make it crisper when cooked.
- to hold using a crimp
- transitiveTo impress (seamen or soldiers); to entrap, to decoy.
“[…]nay, where in any corner he can spy a tall man, clutching at him, to crimp him or impress him.”
“To the Reverend Fathers, it seemed that Denis would make an excellent Jesuit; wherefore they set about coaxing and courting, with intent to crimp him.”
“It appears that that officer, instead of attending to interesting events likely to occur in this quarter, is desirous of plundering corn and crimping recruits”
Formscrimps(plural) · crimps(present, singular, third-person) · crimping(participle, present) · crimped(participle, past) · crimped(past)