cribbing
/ˈkɹɪbɪŋ/
cribbing is the present participle and gerund of crib.
Noun
cribbing (countable and uncountable, plural cribbings)
- The members used to build a (structural) crib, usually of timbers or logs, but also of concrete, steel or even plastic; cribwork.
- As a whole, the heavy structure built to support an existing structure from underneath, as with a mineshaft or when raising a building off its foundation, as for moving to another location,
- After the Loma Prieta earthquake, they had to put cribbing under portions of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway, for fear it would collapse.
- US Army Corps of Engineers site
If the structure is to be raised in place without relocation, once it is raised to the desired elevation the jacks are replaced with timber cribbing.
- The cribbing used to support anything from below or on a side, as with a retaining wall, or to prop up a piece of heavy machinery.
- A self-injurious tendency of certain horses to swallow air while slobbering and biting onto objects in and about their enclosure; cribbing and windsucking are regarded as equine forms of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- An act of plagiarism.
- […] cribbings from Leonardo's notebooks […]1976, Bernice Rose, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), Drawing Now (issue 2, page 19)
Meaning of crib
Verb
crib (third-person singular simple present cribs, present participle cribbing, simple past and past participle cribbed)
- To place or confine in a crib.
- They may go to their beds and give themselves no trouble about their work, and yet in the morning the maids will find the kitchen swept up, and water brought in, and the men will find the horses in the stable well cleaned and curried, and perhaps a supply corn cribbed for them from the neighbours...1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 223
- To shut up or confine in a narrow habitation; to cage; to cramp.
- if only the vital energy be not cribbed or cramped1860, Isaac Taylor, “(please specify the page)”, in Ultimate Civilization and Other Essays, London: Bell and Daldy […], →OCLC
- To collect one or more passages and/or references for use in a speech, written document or as an aid for some task; to create a crib sheet.
- I cribbed the recipe from the Food Network site, but made a few changes of my own.
- To plagiarize; to copy; to cheat.
- He then proceeded to patch his tags together with the help of his Gradus, producing an incongruous and feeble result of eight elegiac lines, the minimum quantity for his form, and finishing up with two highly moral lines extra, making ten in all, which he cribbed entire from one of his books...1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days
- To install timber supports, as with cribbing.
- To steal or embezzle.
- There are a brace of birds and hare, that I cribbed this morning out of a basket of game.1772, Samuel Foote, The Nabob, published 1778, act 1, page 22
Forms of cribbing
| plural | cribbings |
|---|
Words that rhyme with cribbing
Questions about cribbing
- What does cribbing mean?
- Cribbing means the members used to build a (structural) crib, usually of timbers or logs, but also of concrete, steel or even plastic; cribwork.
- What is cribbing the present participle and gerund of?
- Cribbing is the present participle and gerund of crib.
- What part of speech is cribbing?
- Cribbing is a noun.
- How do you pronounce cribbing?
- Cribbing is pronounced /ˈkɹɪbɪŋ/.
- What is the plural of cribbing?
- The plural of cribbing is cribbings.
Words near cribbing in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cribbing (page history and authors); crib (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:
Cite this entry: “cribbing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cribbing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.