Word.ws English Dictionary

crust

/kɹʌst/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northern England/kɹʊst/

crust noun: a more solid, dense or hard layer on a surface or boundary. Also the ellipsis of crust punk.

Noun

crust (countable and uncountable, plural crusts)

  1. A more solid, dense or hard layer on a surface or boundary.
  2. The external, hardened layer of certain foodstuffs, including most types of bread, fried meat, etc.
  3. An outer layer composed of pastry
    • Th' impenetrable crust thy teeth defies.1693, Decimus Junius Juvenalis, John Dryden, transl., “[The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis.] The Fifth Satyr”, in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into English Verse. […]...
    • They […] made the crust for the venison pasty.1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter III, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and...
  4. The bread-like base of a pizza.
  5. (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Northern-US, UK) A slice of bread cut from the end of a loaf; the heel.
  6. The outermost layer of the lithosphere of the Earth.
    • Holonyms: lithosphere < Earth
    • The crust (a mere 1% of the Earth's volume) is made of lighter melt products from the mantle.2012, Chinle Miller, In Mesozoic Lands: The Mesozoic Geology of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Kindle edition
  7. (broadly) The outermost layer of the lithosphere of any terrestrial planet.
    • Holonyms: lithosphere < planet
  8. The shell of crabs, lobsters, etc.
  9. (Australia, UK, informal) A living.
    • to earn one's crust
    • Like most of us, I am frequently asked by friends and people I meet in business situations or round the dinner table what I do to earn my crust.1999, Norman Longworth, Making Lifelong Learning Work: Learning Cities for a Learning Century, Psychology Press, →ISBN, page 1
  10. (informal, uncountable) Nerve, gall.
    • You've got a lot of crust standing there saying that.
    • “Oh?” she said. “So you have decided to revise my guest list for me? You have the nerve, the – the –” I saw she needed helping out. “Audacity,” I said, throwing her the line. “The audacity to dictate to me who I shall have in my house.” It should have been “whom”, but I let it go. “You have the –”...1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XVIII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC
  11. (Australia, UK, dated, slang) The head.
    • “Well, all I can say is that if yer don't take yer dial outer the road I'll bloomin' well take an' bounce a gibber off yer crust.”1918, Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding, page 90

Verb

crust (third-person singular simple present crusts, present participle crusting, simple past and past participle crusted)

  1. (transitive) To cover with a crust.
    • The whole body is crusted over with ice.1662, Robert Boyle, An Account of Freezing
    • Their minds are crusted over, like diamonds in the rock.1711, Henry Felton, Dissertation on Reading the Classics
  2. (intransitive) To form a crust.
    • , The Goblin Reign Boxed Set
      Thistle held her hand over the wound and pressed a wad of tree moss against it. "Don't move," she said. "Let it crust."

Also used as

crust is also the ellipsis of crust punk.

crust meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Tagalog and Arabic

crust in Hindi

outermost layer of a planet
भूपर्पटी bhūparpaṭī, पर्पटी parpaṭī
any solid, hard surface layer
छिलका chilkā

crust in Urdu

any solid, hard surface layer
چھِلْکا chilkā, پوسْت post

crust in Tagalog

outermost layer of a planet
upak, upak ng Duta

crust in Arabic

outermost layer of a planet
قِشْرَة qišra
More languagesFewer languages
crust in Thai
เปลือกดาว, เปลือก bplʉ̀ʉak
crust in Vietnamese
lớp vỏ

Examples of crust in a sentence

  • The thickness of the Earth's crust varies from two to 70 kilometres.
  • Weaknesses in the earth’s crust allow deep-seated heat to rise nearer to the surface.
  • She will now overlay the crust with fruit.

All 40 example sentences with crust

Synonyms of crust

Forms of crust

Noun
pluralcrusts
Verb
third-person singular presentcrusts
present participlecrusting
past participlecrusted
pastcrusted

Past tense of crust: crusted

Plural of crust: crusts

Origin of crust

From Middle English cruste, from Anglo-Norman and Old French cruste, from Latin crusta (“hard outer covering”), from Proto-Indo-European *krustós (“hardened”), from *krews- (“to form a crust, begin to freeze”), related to Old Norse hroðr (“scurf”), Old English hruse (“earth”), Old High German hrosa (“crust, ice”), Latvian kruvesis (“frozen mud”), Ancient Greek κρύος (krúos, “frost, icy cold”), κρύσταλλος (krústallos, “crystal, ice”), Avestan 𐬑𐬭𐬎𐬰𐬛𐬭𐬀- (xruzdra-, “hard”), Sanskrit क्रूड् (krūḍ, “thicken, make hard”). Doublet of crusta.

Words formed from crust

Phrases with crust

5 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with crust

25 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about crust

What does crust mean?
Crust means a more solid, dense or hard layer on a surface or boundary.
What is crust in Hindi?
Crust in Hindi is भूपर्पटी (bhūparpaṭī), पर्पटी (parpaṭī), छिलका (chilkā). See Crust meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is crust?
Crust can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce crust?
Crust is pronounced /kɹʌst/.
What is the plural of crust?
The plural of crust is crusts.

Words near crust in the dictionary

  1. crusily
  2. Crusoe
  3. Crusoean
  4. Crusoes
  5. Crusoesque
  6. crust
  7. crust punk
  8. crust punks
  9. crusta
  10. crusta lactea
  11. crustacea

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crust (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.

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