Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
Creep \Creep\ (kr[=e]p), v. t. [imp. {Crept} (kr[e^]pt) ({Crope}
(kr[=o]p), Obs.); p. p. {Crept}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Creeping}.]
[OE. crepen, creopen, AS. cre['o]pan; 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.
Creeping \Creep"ing\, a.
1. Crawling, or moving close to the ground. ``Every creeping
thing.'' --Gen. vi. 20.
2. Growing along, and clinging to, the ground, or to a wall,
etc., by means of rootlets or tendrils.
Casements lined with creeping herbs. --Cowper.
{Ceeping crowfoot} (Bot.), a plant, the {Ranunculus repens}.
{Creeping snowberry}, an American plant ({Chiogenes
hispidula}) with white berries and very small round leaves
having the flavor of wintergreen.
Source : WordNet®
creeping
n : a slow creeping mode of locomotion (on hands and knees or
dragging the body); "a crawl was all that the injured man
could manage"; "the traffic moved at a creep" [syn: {crawl},
{crawling}, {creep}]