Crisp

How to spell crisp

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce crisp

What does crisp mean?

1. adjectivePleasantly firm, dry, and brittle, so that it breaks or crackles cleanly.
2. adjectiveOf weather or air: cool, dry, and refreshingly bracing.
3. nounA thin slice of potato fried or baked until brittle, sold as a savoury snack.

Crisp in a sentence

• adjective

  The baker pulled a loaf with a crisp golden crust from the oven.

• adjective

  A crisp autumn morning greeted the hikers at the trailhead.

• noun

  He ate one salty potato crisp and saved the rest of the packet.

• adjective

  She liked her bacon crisp rather than soft and chewy.

• adjective

  The air felt crisp and clear after the overnight frost.

• noun

  Each thin potato crisp in the bag was dusted with vinegar seasoning.

Where does crisp come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word goes back to the Latin crispus, which literally meant 'curled' or 'wrinkled', the kind of word the Romans used for tightly curling hair. Old English borrowed it very early, before the Norman Conquest, so it is one of the rare Latin loans that arrived in the Anglo-Saxon period rather than later through French. For centuries 'crisp' still carried that original sense of curling or rippling, and you can see it in old descriptions of curly locks or the wrinkled surface of water. The modern meaning of firm and brittle developed because something dry and curled often snaps or crackles, so the idea drifted from 'curled' to 'crackling and crunchy'. In British English a further sense settled on the thin fried potato slice known as a crisp, while the spelling itself has stayed admirably simple and phonetic throughout.

How the word is built

• crisp (from Latin crispus: curled, wrinkled)