crimp

Meaning

Noun

1. A fastener or a fastening method that secures parts by bending metal around a joint and squeezing it together, often with a tool that adds indentations to capture the parts.
2. The natural curliness of wool fibres.
3. Hair that is shaped so it bends back and forth in many short kinks.
4. (obsolete) A card game.
5. A small hold with little surface area.
6. A grip on such a hold.

Adj

1. (obsolete) Easily crumbled; friable; brittle.
2. (obsolete) Weak; inconsistent; contradictory.

Verb

1. To press into small ridges or folds, to pleat, to corrugate.
2. To fasten by bending metal so that it squeezes around the parts to be fastened.
3. To pinch and hold; to seize.
4. To style hair into a crimp, to form hair into tight curls, to make it kinky.
5. To bend or mold leather into shape.
6. To gash the flesh, e.g. of a raw fish, to make it crisper when cooked.
7. to hold using a crimp

Verb

To impress (seamen or soldiers); to entrap, to decoy.

Synonyms

curl

frizz

crisp

fold

plication

crinkle

bend

crimper

crease

frizzle

pinch

hindrance

pucker

gather

brittle

plica

flexure

kink

kink up

crape

wave

👋

flanging

flection

flute

🪈

folding

fragile

friable

frill

goffer

handicap

hem

interfere

lap

loop

➿

obstacle

obstruct

pleat

ply

quill

recruiter

restraint

roll

ruck

screw

spiral

sulcus

trouble

twine

warp

ruga

convulate

transition knuckle

edge fold

barrier

straight flange

bolt

bowing

buckle

cockle

coil

corrugate

crimped

crimping

crinkly

crush

curb

dash

💨

decoy

disadvantage

disturbance

disturber

drawback

embarrassment

entrap

entwine

Pronounced as (IPA)

/kɹɪmp/

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English: crimpen

Cognate with Old English: ġecrympan

Cognate with Dutch: krimpen

Cognate with Faroese: kreppa

Cognate with Icelandic: kreppa

Cognate with Middle English: crymplen

In summary

From Middle English crimpen (“to be contracted, be drawn together”), from Middle Dutch crimpen, crempen (“to crimp”), from Proto-Germanic *krimpaną (“to shrink, draw back”) (compare related Old English ġecrympan (“to curl”)). Cognate with Dutch krimpen, German Low German krimpen, Faroese kreppa (“crisis”), and Icelandic kreppa (“to bend tightly, clench”). Compare also derivative Middle English crymplen (“to wrinkle”) and causative crempen (“to turn something back, restrain”, literally “to cause to shrink or draw back”), both ultimately derived from the same root. See also cramp.