crisps

Noun

crisp (plural crisps)

1. (Ireland, UK, in plural) In full potato crisp: a thin slice of potato which has been deep-fried until it is brittle and crispy, and eaten when cool; they are typically packaged and sold as a snack.
   • Edward, give me another of those delicious olives. / What's that? Potato crisps? No, I can't endure them.1949 August 22 (first performance), T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot, The Cocktail Party: A Comedy, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.; Hollywood, Los Angeles, Calif.: Samuel French […], published 1950...

   Synonyms:

   chip, potato chip

2. (Ireland, UK, broadly, in plural) Sometimes with a descriptive word: a crispy, savoury snack made of some other ingredient(s) (such as cornmeal or a vegetable) which is baked or deep-fried and eaten like a potato crisp.
   • kale crisps prawn crisp

   Synonyms:

   chip, potato chip

3. (Canada, US) A type of baked dessert consisting of fruit topped with a crumbly mixture made with fat, flour, and sugar; a crumble.

   Synonyms:

   crunch

4. (dated, slang) A banknote; also, a number of banknotes collectively.
5. (also, figuratively) Chiefly in to a crisp: a food item that has been overcooked, or a thing which has been burned, to the point of becoming charred or dried out.
   • He bears my name—Glendinning. I will disown it; were it like this dress, I would tear my name off from me, and burn it till it shriveled to a crisp!1852 July, Herman Melville, “Book XII. Isabel, Mrs. Glendenning, the Portrait, and Lucy.”, in Pierre: Or, The Ambiguities, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, section II, pages 262–263
6. (dialectal, obsolete except UK) The crispy rind of roast pork; crackling.
   • Alon[zo]. Anon they’l cut off ſlivers from us, as they did from the vvhole Ox, in St. James’s Fair. / Gonz[alo]. Oh, ’tis intollerable: methinks I hear a great ſhe Devil, call for [a] Groats vvorth of the Criſpe of my Countenance.—They are all for Griſtle.1674 November 29 (probable first performance; Gregorian calendar), T. Duffett [i.e., Thomas Duffet], The Mock-tempest: Or The Enchanted Castle. […], London: […] William Cademan […], published 1675...

See all 35 meanings of crisp