crumb
UK/kɹʌm/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Australia/kɹɐm/
crumb noun: a small piece which breaks off from baked food (such as cake, biscuit or bread). Also the ellipsis of crumb rubber.
Noun
crumb (countable and uncountable, plural crumbs)
- A small piece which breaks off from baked food (such as cake, biscuit or bread).
- The pigeons were happily pecking at crumbs of bread on the ground.
- desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Luke 16:21
- A small piece of any other solid substance.
- Then erase any pencil lines with a good, soft eraser, rubbing gently, in only one direction. A dustbrush can be useful in removing any eraser crumbs.2012, Caroline Joy Adams, An Italic Calligraphy Handbook, page 79
- A bit, small amount.
- a crumb of comfort
- The soft internal portion of bread, surrounded by crust.
- Dust unto dust, what must be, must; / If you can't get crumb, you'd best eat crust.1861, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown at Oxford
- A mixture of sugar, cocoa and milk, used to make industrial chocolate.
- A nobody; a worthless person.
- All Dad can think of is a gift certificate from the Melody Inn? And my crumb of a boyfriend doesn't even show up? This is a birthday?1999, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Alice on the Outside, page 146
- Synonyms:
- loser, quidam, absolute zero, also-ran, chopped liver, cipher, Joe Nobody, little guy, minnow, nebbish
- A body louse (Pediculus humanus).
Verb
crumb (third-person singular simple present crumbs, present participle crumbing, simple past and past participle crumbed)
Proper noun capitalized: Crumb
Crumb (plural Crumbs)
- A surname.
Also used as
crumb is also the ellipsis of crumb rubber.
crumb meaning in Nepali, Arabic, Indonesian and Persian
crumb in Nepali
- क्रम्ब
crumb in Arabic
- small piece of biscuit, cake, etc
- كِسْرَة kisra, فُتَات futāt
- soft internal portion of bread
- لُبّ lubb
crumb in Indonesian
- small piece of biscuit, cake, etc
- remahan
crumb in Persian
- small piece of biscuit, cake, etc
- خرده xorde
More languagesFewer languages
- crumb in Thai
- เศษ sèet
- crumb in Vietnamese
- miếng, mẫu, mảnh vụn
Examples of crumb in a sentence
- They sat on a park bench and tossed bread crumbs to the ducks and pigeons.
- The ants did not leave so much as a crumb of bread.
- All that was left of his business were a few measly cake crumbs.
Synonyms of crumb
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of crumb
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | crumbs |
| alternative form (dialectal) | crimb |
| alternative form (obsolete) | crum |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | crumbs |
| present participle | crumbing |
| past participle | crumbed |
| past | crumbed |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Crumbs |
Origin of crumb
From Middle English crome, cromme, crumme, crume, from Old English cruma (“crumb, fragment”), from Proto-Germanic *krumô, *krūmô (“fragment, crumb”). The b is unetymological, as in limb, and first appeared in the mid-15th century, influenced by crumble and words such as dumb, numb, and thumb. Cognate with Dutch kruim (“crumb”), Low German Krome, Krume (“crumb”), German Krume (“crumb”), Danish krumme (“crumb”), Swedish dialectal krumma (“crumb”), Swedish in kråm (“crumbs, giblets”), Icelandic krumur (“crumb”), Latin grūmus (“a little heap”).
English, Scottish, and Irish surname, spelling variant of Crum.
Words formed from crumb
- breadcrumb
- bread crumb
- by crumbs
- cakecrumb
- cake crumbs
- crumbable
- crumb cake
- crumbcloth
- crumb-cruncher
- crumb cruncher
- crumb-crusher
- crumb crusher
- crumber
- crumb grinder
- crumble
- crumbless
- crumblet
- crumblike
- crumb rubber
- crumb snatcher
- crumbum
- crumby
- crummy
- decrumb
- eat and leave no crumbs
- leave no crumbs
- pick up one's crumbs
- toastcrumb
- crumb down
- crumb up
- crumbed
Phrases with crumb
Words that rhyme with crumb
Questions about crumb
- What does crumb mean?
- Crumb means a small piece which breaks off from baked food (such as cake, biscuit or bread).
- What is crumb in Nepali?
- Crumb in Nepali is क्रम्ब. See Crumb meaning in Nepali.
- What part of speech is crumb?
- Crumb can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce crumb?
- Crumb is pronounced /kɹʌm/ (UK).
- What is the plural of crumb?
- The plural of crumb is crumbs.
Words near crumb in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: crumb (page history and authors); Crumb (page history and authors); crumb (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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-crumb.ogg.
Cite this entry: “crumb.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crumb. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.