Crib

How to spell crib

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce crib

What does crib mean?

1. nounA small bed with high barred sides for an infant or young child.
2. nounA model of the manger and stable representing the birth of Jesus, displayed at Christmas.
3. verbTo copy something dishonestly, especially answers in an exam.

Crib in a sentence

• noun

  They assembled the crib in the nursery before the baby arrived.

• noun

  The church set up a wooden crib near the altar for Christmas.

• verb

  He tried to crib a few answers from the student beside him.

• noun

  The toddler stood up and rattled the side of the crib.

• noun

  Every figure in the crib was carved by a local craftsman.

• verb

  Writers sometimes crib ideas from sources without crediting them.

Where does crib come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Crib comes straight from the Old English word cribb, which meant a manger or feeding trough for cattle, the kind of wooden rack from which animals pull their hay. It belongs to a broad Germanic family, with close relatives such as the German Krippe, also a manger, and that shared ancestry is why English-speaking Christian tradition still calls a model of the Nativity scene a crib, after the manger in which the infant was laid. From the idea of a small enclosed feeding box the word spread to other small enclosures: a child's barred bed in American usage, a snug little dwelling in slang, and even a lined storage bin for grain. The schoolroom sense, a hidden translation or set of answers used to cheat, grew from the verb to crib, meaning to pilfer or copy in a sneaky, small-scale way. Because crib is short, native, and phonetically regular, its spelling has stayed simple and stable across the centuries.

How the word is built

• crib (single Old English root cribb, a manger or stall)