Other forms: cribs, cribbing, cribbed
A crib is the small bed a baby sleeps in, with high barred sides so nobody rolls out in the night. That is the American word; in Britain the same piece of furniture is a cot.
The older meaning is a manger — the wooden box of hay that animals feed from — which is why the baby in the Christmas story is laid in a crib. From there the word went to strange places. A crib, or crib sheet, is a page of notes smuggled into an exam, and to crib is to copy somebody else's work: he cribbed the whole essay off a website. In American slang, your crib is the place you live. And cribbage, the card game, is crib for short.
1nouncribA baby's bed with high barred sides. British English calls it a cot.
“She lowered the sleeping baby into the crib.”
2nounrackA rack or box holding hay for animals to feed from; a manger.
“The ox pulled a mouthful of hay from the crib.”
3nounsheetA sheet of notes used secretly to cheat in an exam. Informal.
“The examiner found a crib tucked inside his sleeve.”
4verbcopyTo copy somebody else's work and pass it off as your own. Informal.
“He cribbed his answers from the boy next to him.”
5nounplaceThe place where you live. American slang.
“Come back to my crib and we'll order food.”
crib is a bed.
Also accepted in games: cot
Old English had crib for a manger or a stall, and behind it stands Proto-Germanic kribjo, meaning crib or wickerwork — something twisted together, from a root ger-, to turn or twist. So the first cribs were woven. It is a doublet of crèche, the French word for that same nativity manger, and the cheating and copying senses grew later out of the verb.
Old English
cribb
Middle English
crib
English, today
crib
Built from
From Middle English crib, from Old English cribb. From Middle English crib, cribbe, from Old English crib, cryb, cribb, crybb (“couch, bed; manger, stall”), from Proto-West Germanic kribbjā, from Proto-Germanic kribjǭ (“crib, wickerwork”), from Proto-Indo-European grebʰ-, gerbʰ- (“bunch, bundle, tuft, clump”), from ger- (“to turn, twist”). Cognate with stq Kräbbe, Krääb, Krääf (“crib”), West Frisian krêbe (“crib”), Dutch krib (“crib, manger”), German Krippe (“rack, crib”), Danish krybbe (“crib”), Icelandic krubba (“crib”). a doublet of crèche. The sense of ‘stealing, taking notes, plagiarize’ seems to have developed out of the verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Family & People, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 20 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word