Word.ws English Dictionary

creep

/kɹiːp/

creep verb: to move slowly with the abdomen close to the ground.

Verb

creep (third-person singular simple present creeps, present participle creeping, simple past crept or creeped or (archaic) crope, past participle crept or creeped or (archaic) crope or (archaic) cropen)

  1. (intransitive) To move slowly with the abdomen close to the ground.
    • Lizards and snakes crept over the ground.
    • One evening, while the Rabbit was lying there alone, watching the ants that ran to and fro between his velvet paws in the grass, he saw two strange beings creep out of the tall bracken near him.1922, Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
    Synonyms:
    crawl
  2. (intransitive) To grow across a surface rather than upwards.
  3. (intransitive) To move slowly and quietly in a particular direction.
    • He tried to creep past the guard without being seen.
    • Electrification of the Eastern Region main line from Strasbourg, incidentally, is steadily creeping nearer to Paris, and is now complete as far as Château Thierry, 59 miles away; [...].1961 November, “More accelerations in the French winter timetables”, in Trains Illustrated, page 670
  4. (intransitive) To make small gradual changes, usually in a particular direction.
    • Prices have been creeping up all year.
  5. (idiomatic) To move in a stealthy or secret manner; to move imperceptibly or clandestinely; to insinuate itself or oneself.
    • Old age creeps upon us.
    • […]guard his understanding from being imposed on by the willful or at least undesigned sophistry which creeps into most of the books of argument.1706, John Locke, Of the Conduct of the Understanding, Fallacies
    Synonyms:
    steal in
  6. To slip, or to become slightly displaced.
    • The collodion on a negative, or a coat of varnish, may creep in drying.
    • The quicksilver on a mirror may creep.
  7. To move or behave with servility or exaggerated humility; to fawn.
    • A creeping sycophant.
    • To come as humbly as they used to creep / To holy altars.c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  8. To have a sensation as of insects creeping on the skin of the body; to crawl.
    • The sight made my flesh creep.
  9. To drag in deep water with creepers, as for recovering a submarine cable.
  10. (intransitive, slang, African-American Vernacular) To covertly have sex (with a person other than one's primary partner); to cheat with.
    • Honey came in and she caught me red-handed / Creeping with the girl next door / Picture this we were both butt naked / Banging on the bathroom floor2000, “It Wasn't Me”, performed by Shaggy
    • I don't wanna know / If you're playin' me, keep it on the low / 'Cause my heart can't take it anymore / And if you're creepin', please don't let it show2003, “I Don't Wanna Know”, performed by Mario Winans

Noun

creep (countable and uncountable, plural creeps)

  1. The movement of something that creeps (like worms or snails).
  2. A relatively small gradual change, variation or deviation (from a planned value) in a measure.
  3. A slight displacement of an object; the slight movement of something.
  4. (uncountable) The gradual expansion or proliferation of something beyond its original goals or boundaries, considered negatively.
    • Christmas creep
    • feature creep
  5. In sewn books, the tendency of pages on the inside of a quire to stand out farther than those on the outside of it.
  6. (materials science) An increase in strain with time; the gradual flow or deformation of a material under stress.
    Synonyms:
    cold flow
  7. The imperceptible downslope movement of surface rock.
  8. (derogatory, informal) Someone creepy (annoyingly unpleasant), especially one who is strange or eccentric.
    • "You mentioned some others," I said.
      "More creeps," she told me. '"That guy was plain looking for trouble. You know, he starts hanging out with some of the shooters Whitey Tass keeps around, angling for an introduction to the big man himself, and he's damn lucky he got picked up by the fuzz before...1968, Mickey Spillane, Delta Factor
    • But I'm a creep / I'm a weirdo / What the hell am I doing here? / I don't belong here1992, “Creep”, in Pablo Honey, performed by Radiohead
  9. (derogatory, especially, informal) A person who engages in sexually inappropriate behaviour or sexual harassment.
    • It was whispered that the priest was a pervert. Was he? The girls said he was a creep. I didn't quite know what it meant to be a creep, but it was obviously not a good thing. It was said that he sometimes fondled the girls, their breasts, and said lousy things to them, that they were beautiful or...2016, Jón Gnarr, Hrefna Lind Heimisdóttir, translated by Lytton Smith, The Pirate, page 201
    • Saiera shuddered through an exaggerated shiver. "He's a creep. He was a creep in high school, and he's been a creep ever since. Look..." She flipped to the index, found what she was looking for, and fanned the pages until she reached the one she wanted. "Here he is.
      A young Andy Gluck, chubby as a...2022, Scott Bell, Pest Cemetery, page 235
    Synonyms:
    pervert, perv
  10. A barrier with small openings used to keep large animals out while allowing smaller animals to pass through.

Proper noun capitalized: CREEP

CREEP

  1. (abbreviation, acronym, derogatory, historical) Acronym of Committee to Re-elect the President, which raised money for Richard Nixon's campaign for 1972 reelection.
    • While presidential elections have been marred by mudslinging since the early Republic, these USC alums deployed a particular type of dirty tricks: what became known as “ratf--king,” or the use of unscrupulous tactics to interfere with the campaigns of opponents. The tactics pioneered by members of...2024 August 8, Jonathan van Harmelen, “The Little-Known Group That Pioneered Watergate’s Dirty Tricks—and Changed American Politics”, in TIME, archived from the original on 14 Aug 2024
    Synonyms:
    CRP

creep meaning in Persian

creep in Persian

to move slowly and quietly in a particular direction
مخیدن maxidan
movement of something that creeps
خزیدن

Examples of creep in a sentence

  • Paranoia strikes deep / Into your life it will creep / It starts when you're always afraid / Step out of line, the man come and take you away1966 December, Stephen Stills, “For What It's Worth”performed by Buffalo Springfield:
  • Midnight creeps so slowly into hearts of men / Who need more than they get / Daylight deals a bad hand to a woman / Who has laid too many bets1979, Earth, Wind & Fire, “Boogie Wonderland”, in I Am:
  • "Now you want the nigga out 'cause he creeping with his baby momma."2016, Sherika Moore, Been Hustlen, →ISBN:
  • "Why're you working your butt off for that creep?1994, Bapsi Sidhwa, An American Brat, page 168:

All 40 example sentences with creep

Synonyms of creep

All synonyms of creep

Forms of creep

Verb
third-person singular presentcreeps
present participlecreeping
pastcrept
pastcreeped
past participlecrept
past participlecreeped
past (archaic)crope
past participle (archaic)crope
past participle (archaic)cropen
Noun
pluralcreeps

Past tense of creep: crept or creeped

Plural of creep: creeps

Origin of creep

From Middle English crepen, from Old English crēopan (“to creep, crawl”), from Proto-West Germanic *kreupan, from Proto-Germanic *kreupaną (“to twist, creep”), from Proto-Indo-European *grewbʰ- (“to turn, wind”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian krûpe (“to creep, crawl”), Central Franconian kruffe (“to creep, crawl”), Dutch kruipen (“to creep, crawl”), Low German krepen, krupen (“to creep, crawl”), Danish krybe (“to creep”), Faroese krúpa (“to creep”), Icelandic krjúpa (“to kneel down, to genuflect, to get down on one's knees”), Norwegian Bokmål krype (“to creep”), Norwegian Nynorsk krjupa, krjupe, krypa, krype (“to creep, crawl”), Swedish krypa (“to creep, crawl”). The noun is derived from the verb. Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *grewbʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *kreupaną Proto-West Germanic *kreupan Old English crēopan Middle English crepen English creep

Words formed from creep

Phrases with creep

4 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with creep

30 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about creep

What does creep mean?
Creep means to move slowly with the abdomen close to the ground.
What is creep in Persian?
Creep in Persian is مخیدن (maxidan), خزیدن. See Creep meaning in Persian.
How do you use creep in a sentence?
Paranoia strikes deep / Into your life it will creep / It starts when you're always afraid / Step out of line, the man come and take you away
What part of speech is creep?
Creep can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce creep?
Creep is pronounced /kɹiːp/.
What is the past tense of creep?
The past tense of creep is crept.

Words near creep in the dictionary

  1. creened
  2. creener
  3. creeners
  4. creening
  5. creens
  6. creep
  7. creep in
  8. creep joint
  9. creep joints
  10. creep on
  11. creep out

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: creep (page history and authors); CREEP (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-creep.ogg.

Cite this entry: “creep.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/creep. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.