crib

Meanings

1. A baby’s bed with high, often slatted, often moveable sides, suitable for a child who has outgrown a cradle or bassinet.
2. A bed for a child older than a baby.
3. A small sleeping berth in a packet or other small vessel.
4. A wicker basket.
5. A manger, a feeding trough for animals elevated off the earth or floor, especially one for fodder such as hay.
6. The baby Jesus and the manger in a creche or nativity scene, consisting of statues of Mary, Joseph and various other characters such as the magi.
7. A bin for drying or storing grain, such as a corn crib.
8. A small room or covered structure, especially one of rough construction, used for storage or penning animals.
9. A confined space, such as a cage or office cubicle.
10. A job, a position; (British) an appointment.
11. A hovel, a roughly constructed building best suited to the shelter of animals but used for human habitation.
12. A boxy structure traditionally built of heavy wooden timbers, to support an existing structure from below, as with a mineshaft or a building being raised off its foundation in preparation for being moved; see cribbing.

1. To place or confine in a crib.
2. To shut up or confine in a narrow habitation; to cage; to cramp.
3. 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.
4. To plagiarize; to copy; to cheat.
5. To install timber supports, as with cribbing.
6. To steal or embezzle.
7. To complain, to grumble
8. To crowd together, or to be confined, as if in a crib or in narrow accommodations.
9. To seize the manger or other solid object with the teeth and draw in wind.
10. To use a known piece of information corresponding to a section of encrypted text, to work out the remaining sections.

Etymology

From Middle English crib, cribbe, from Old English crib, cryb, cribb, crybb (“couch, bed; manger, stall”), from Proto-West Germanic *kribbjā, from Proto-Germanic *kribjǭ (“crib, wickerwork”), from Proto-Indo-European *grebʰ-, *gerbʰ- (“bunch, bundle, tuft, clump”), from *ger- (“to turn, twist”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Kräbbe, Krääb, Krääf (“crib”), West Frisian krêbe (“crib”), Dutch krib (“crib, manger”), German Krippe (“rack, crib”), Danish krybbe (“crib”), Icelandic krubba (“crib”). Doublet of crèche. The sense of ‘stealing, taking notes, plagiarize’ seems to have developed out of the verb. The criminal sense may derive from the 'basket' sense, circa the mid 18th century, in that a poacher could conceal poachings in such a basket (see the 1772 Samuel Foote quotation). The cheating sense probably derives from the criminal sense.