crib

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.

noun

1. (US) A baby’s bed with high, often slatted, often moveable sides, suitable for a child who has outgrown a cradle or bassinet.
   In two minutes I was kneeling by the child’s crib, and Sandy was dispatching servants here, there, and everywhere, all over the palace. I took in the situation almost at a glance -- membranous croup! 1889, Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
2. (Britain) A bed for a child older than a baby.
3. (nautical) A small sleeping berth in a packet ship or other small vessel
4. A wicker basket.
   Coordinate term: Moses 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, as with a corn crib.
   I began to think of my horse. He, however, like an old campaigner, had taken good care of himself. I found him paying assiduous attention to the crib of Indian corn, and dexterously drawing forth and munching the ears that protruded between the bars. 1835, Washington Irving, chapter 35, in A Tour on the Prairies
8. A small room or covered structure, especially one of rough construction, used for storage or penning animals.
   A kitchen, a meat-house, a dairy, a crib with two stalls in the rear, one for the horse the other for the cow, were the out-buildings 1871, Richard Malcolm Johnston, Dukesborough Tales
9. A confined space, as with a cage or office-cubicle
   The singers were in a crib of wirework (like a large meat-safe or bird-cage) in one corner 1846, Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy
10. (obsolete) A job, a position; (Britain) an appointment.
    He had seen so many lean years of faithful service when the enemy held the corner on all the official cribs that, now in the days of his party’s fatness and of his own righteous reward, the habit of good, honest hustling stuck to him, and he lined up an array of pulls and indorsements that made him swell with happiness every time he went over the list. 1904, Forrest Crissey, Tattlings of a Retired Politician
    but if I have lost my crib and get nothing in exchange I shall feel what a soft Johnny I have been. 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clerk
11. A hovel, a roughly constructed building best suited to the shelter of animals but used for human habitation.
    Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, / Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, / And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, / Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, c. 1596–1599, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2, act 3, scene 1, lines 9–12
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.
13. (usually in the plural) A collection of quotes or references for use in speaking, for assembling a written document, or as an aid to a project of some sort; a crib sheet.
14. (obsolete) A minor theft, extortion or embezzlement, with or without criminal intent.
15. (cribbage) The card game cribbage.
16. (cribbage) The cards discarded by players and used by the dealer.
17. (cryptography) A known piece of information corresponding to a section of encrypted text, that is then used to work out the remaining sections.
18. (southern New Zealand) A small holiday home, often near a beach and of simple construction.
19. (now chiefly Australia, New Zealand) A snack or packed lunch, especially as taken to work to eat during a break.
    He ate a thick square of banana cake from his crib and stared into the fire. 2002, Alex Miller, Journey to the Stone Country, Allen & Unwin, published 2003, page 40
20. (Canada) A small raft made of timber.
21. (UK, obsolete, thieves' cant) The stomach.
    Here's Pannum and Lap, and good Poplars of Yarrum, / To fill up the Crib, and to comfort the Quarron. 1641–42, Richard Brome, A Joviall Crew, or, The Merry Beggars, published 1652, act 2
22. A literal translation, usually of a work originally in Latin or Ancient Greek.
    [On Chapman's use of a Latin literal translation of Homer] As will appear, he blocked out his translation from the Latin crib, keeping one eye uneasily on the Greek, and, enlightened by Scapula or by his own poetic intuition, worked out his own rendering, often marking the departure from the Latin by a defiant note in the margin or commentary. 1966, Millar MacLure, George Chapman: a critical study, page 171
23. (slang) A cheat sheet or past test used by students; crib sheet.
24. (slang, sometimes African-American Vernacular) One’s residence, house or dwelling place, or usual place of resort.
    Why, you would not be boosing till lightman's in a square crib like mine, as if you were in a flash panny? 1828, Edward Bulwer Lytton Baron Lytton, Pelham, Or, Adventures of a Gentleman
    Toby and me were over the garden-wall the night afore last, sounding the panels of the door and shutters. The crib's barred up at night like a jail; but there's one part we can crack, safe and softly. 1838, Charles Dickens, chapter XIX, in Oliver Twist
    My flow, my show brought me the dough / That bought me all my fancy things / My crib, my cars, my pools, my jewels. 2003, “In da Club”, in 50 Cent, Dr. Dre, Mike Elizondo (lyrics), Get Rich or Die Tryin', performed by 50 Cent

verb

1. (transitive) To place or confine in a crib.
2. To shut up or confine in a narrow habitation; to cage; to cramp.
   But now I am cabin'd, cribbed, confined, bound in, / To saucy doubts and fears a. 1606, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 3, scene 4, lines 23–24
3. (transitive) 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.
   I cribbed the recipe from the Food Network site, but made a few changes of my own.
4. (transitive, informal) To plagiarize; to copy; to cheat.
   He then proceeded to patch his tags together with the help of his Gradus, producing an incongruous and feeble result of eight elegiac lines, the minimum quantity for his form, and finishing up with two highly moral lines extra, making ten in all, which he cribbed entire from one of his books, beginning "O genus humanum," and which he himself must have used a dozen times before, whenever an unfortunate or wicked hero, of whatever nation or language under the sun, was the subject. 1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days
   This subplot—as well as a few other threads that have been teased from the Star Wars saga’s next installment—prompts another question: just how much of this film’s plot will be cribbed from The Empire Strikes Back? 2017-08-09, Laura Bradley, “How Star Wars: The Last Jedi Will—and Won’t—Echo The Empire Strikes Back”, in Vanity Fair
5. (intransitive) To install timber supports, as with cribbing.
6. (transitive, obsolete) To steal or embezzle, to cheat out of.
   There are a brace of birds and hare, that I cribbed this morning out of a basket of game. 1772, Samuel Foote, The Nabob, published 1778, act 1, page 22
   It was very easy, Briggs said, to make a galley-slave of a boy all the half-year, and then score him up idle; and to crib two dinners a-week out of his board, and then score him up greedy; but that wasn’t going to be submitted to, he believed, was it? 1848, Charles Dickens, “14”, in Dombey and Son
   "Somebody crib the mayor's crown jools, or has some joyous cuss eloped with the auto patrol?" June 1920, The Electrical Experimenter, New York, page 151, column 2
7. (India) To complain, to grumble
   She calls on the neighbours, she's out half the time and doesn't answer the telephone, and when I start cribbing she just laughs. 1957, L.P.Hartley, chapter XI, in Hireling, page 90
8. To crowd together, or to be confined, as if in a crib or in narrow accommodations.
   […] who ſought to make the glory of the Nation and Church of England, which was ever Regal and Epiſcopal ſince it was Chriſtian, truckle under a Scotch Canopy, and to make Biſhops to crib in a Presbyterian trundle-bed; as much as Kingly Majeſtie, to be confounded with Democracy. 1661, John Gauden, Anti Baal-Berith, page 35
9. (intransitive, of a horse) To seize the manger or other solid object with the teeth and draw in wind.