Word.ws English Dictionary

crud

/kɹʌd/

crud noun: dirt, filth or refuse.

Noun (1)

crud (countable and uncountable, plural cruds)

  1. (uncountable) Dirt, filth or refuse.
    • Crud is caked in the crevices of her jewellery. All of it needs cleaning.2018, Tsitsi Dangarembga, This Mournable Body, Faber & Faber (2020), page 30
  2. (broadly, figuratively, uncountable) Something of poor quality.
  3. (countable) A contemptible person.
  4. Mixed impurities, especially wear and corrosion products in nuclear reactor coolant.
  5. (uncountable) A heavy wet snow on which it is difficult to travel.
  6. (euphemistic, uncountable) Feces; excrement.
    Synonyms:
    crap
  7. (US, slang, uncountable, military and students) Venereal disease, or (by extension) any disease.
  8. (uncountable) A fast-paced game, loosely based on billiards or pool, with many players participating at the same time.
  9. (Pennsylvania, Western) Cottage cheese.

Verb

crud (third-person singular simple present cruds, present participle crudding, simple past and past participle crudded)

  1. (transitive) To clog with dirt or debris.
    • The covered cardboard boxes held and the packings in the crates suffered no further crudding.2011, Henry Z. Kister, Distillation Troubleshooting, page 203

Interjection

  1. (minced oath) Non-vulgar interjection expressing annoyance, anxiety, etc.; sugar, darn.
    • Oh, crud! I'm gonna be late for work!
    • Aw, crud! I have to start all over again!
    Synonyms:
    crap

Noun (2) capitalized: CRUD

CRUD (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of create, read, update, delete, the basic operations of a database management system.

Examples of crud in a sentence

  • A bath is a lovely relaxing event, until the realization that you're soaking in your own crud.
  • You know that crud in the corners of your eyes when you first wake up?
  • If he's got some kind of creeping crud, I definitely don't want it.

All 15 example sentences with crud

Synonyms of crud

Forms of crud

Noun
pluralcruds
Verb
third-person singular presentcruds
present participlecrudding
past participlecrudded
pastcrudded

Origin of crud

From Middle English crud, crudde (“coagulated milk; curd; any coagulated or thickened substance; dregs”), from Old English crūdan (“to press”). Doublet of curd.

Words formed from crud

Words that rhyme with crud

15 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about crud

What does crud mean?
Crud means dirt, filth or refuse.
What part of speech is crud?
Crud can be a noun, a verb or an interjection.
How do you pronounce crud?
Crud is pronounced /kɹʌd/.
What is the plural of crud?
The plural of crud is cruds.

Words near crud in the dictionary

  1. cruckled
  2. cruckles
  3. cruckling
  4. crucks
  5. Crucorney
  6. crud
  7. crudball
  8. crudballs
  9. Cruddas
  10. crudded
  11. cruddier

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crud (page history and authors); CRUD (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-au-crud.ogg.

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