Creep , n.
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.
Creep (krēp), v. t. [imp. Crept
(kr&ebreve;pt) (Crope (krōp), Obs.);
p. p. Crept; p. pr. & vb. n. Creeping.]
[OE. crepen, creopen, AS.
creópan; akin to D. kruipen, G. kriechen, Icel. krjupa, Sw. krypa,
Dan. krybe. Cf. Cripple, Crouch.]
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 a guilty thing, I creep.
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 sophistry 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.
Hear it pronounced