cresting

Verb

crest (third-person singular simple present crests, present participle cresting, simple past and past participle crested)

1. (intransitive) Particularly with reference to waves, to reach a peak.
   • The Skagit and Snohomish Rivers, which run through the region, are predicted to crest at record levels.2025 December 12, Sam Sifton, “Why Is It So Hard to Build Big Things?”, in The New York Times
2. (transitive) To reach the crest of (e.g. a hill or mountain).
   • the land rolls gently, so that, upon cresting a low rise or passing a copse of wind turbines, you suddenly spot a lot full of lorries or a complex of gigantic sheds.2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian
3. (transitive) To furnish with, or surmount as, a crest; to serve as a crest for.
   • His legs bestrid the ocean, his reared arm / Crested the world.c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
4. (transitive) To mark with lines or streaks like waving plumes.
   • Like as the shining skie in summers night, / What time the dayes with scorching heat abound, / Is creasted all with lines of firie light1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 13

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