crib

 
Pronunciation: /krɪb/

noun

  • 1chiefly North American a child’s bed with barred or latticed sides; a cot: tiptoeing over to the crib, he looked down at the sleeping child
  • a barred container or rack for animal fodder; a manger.
  • British a model of the Nativity of Christ, with a manger as a bed: a choir was singing carols by a crib
  • 2 informal a translation of a text for use by students, especially in a surreptitious way: an English crib of Caesar’s Gallic Wars
  • a thing that has been plagiarized: is the song a crib from Mozart’s ‘Don Giovanni’?
  • 3 informal, chiefly North American a person’s apartment or house: you hook up with a girl and take her back to your crib
  • 4 [mass noun]short for cribbage. he would play crib with zest
  • [count noun] the cards discarded by the players at cribbage, counting to the dealer.
  • 5 (also cribwork) a heavy timber framework used in foundations for a building or to line a mineshaft.
  • 6Australian/NZ a light meal; a snack: I was carrying my crib in a paper bag

verb (cribs, cribbing, cribbed)

[with object]
  • 1British informal copy (another person’s work) illicitly or without acknowledgement: he was doing an exam and didn’t want anybody to crib the answers from him [no object]: he often cribbed from other researchers
  • archaic steal: a brace of birds and hare, that I cribbed this morning out of a basket of game
  • 2 archaic restrain: he had been so cabined, cribbed, and confined by office
  • 3 [no object] British dated or Indian grumble: those guys have nothing to crib about

Derivatives

cribber

noun

Origin:

Old English (in the sense 'manger'), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch krib, kribbe and German Krippe