crib
Americannoun
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cribs
plural
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a child's bed with enclosed sides.
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a stall or pen for cattle.
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a rack or manger for fodder, as in a stable or barn.
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a bin for storing grain, salt, etc.
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Informal.
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a translation, list of correct answers, or other illicit aid used by students while reciting, taking exams, or the like; pony.
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a petty theft.
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a room, closet, etc., in a factory or the like, in which tools are kept and issued to workers.
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a shallow, separate section of a bathing area, reserved for small children.
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any confined space.
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Slang. a house, shop, etc., frequented by thieves or regarded by thieves as a likely place for burglarizing.
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Building Trades, Civil Engineering. any of various cellular frameworks of logs, squared timbers, or steel or concrete objects of similar form assembled in layers at right angles, often filled with earth and stones and used in the construction of foundations, dams, retaining walls, etc.
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a barrier projecting part of the way into a river and then upward, acting to reduce the flow of water and as a storage place for logs being floated downstream.
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a lining for a well or other shaft.
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Slang. one's home; pad.
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Cribbage. a set of cards made up by equal contributions from each player's hand, and belonging to the dealer.
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a cheap, ill-kept brothel.
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a wicker basket.
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British, Australian. lunch, especially a cold lunch carried from home to work and eaten by a laborer on the job; snack.
verb (used with object)
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cribs,
present (3rd person singular)
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cribbed,
past participle, past
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cribbing
present participle
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Informal. to pilfer or steal, especially to plagiarize (another's writings or ideas).
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to confine in or as if in a crib.
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to provide with a crib or cribs.
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to line with timber or planking.
verb (used without object)
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cribs,
present (3rd person singular)
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cribbed,
past participle, past
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cribbing
present participle
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Informal.
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to use a crib in examinations, homework, translating, etc.
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to steal; plagiarize.
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(of a horse) to practice cribbing.
noun
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a child's bed with slatted wooden sides; cot
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a cattle stall or pen
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a fodder rack or manger
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a bin or granary for storing grain, etc
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a small crude cottage or room
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informal a house or residence
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a weekend cottage: term is South Island usage only
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any small confined space
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informal a brothel
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a wicker basket
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a representation of the manger in which the infant Jesus was laid at birth
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informal a theft, esp of another's writing or thoughts
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Also called (esp US): pony. informal a translation of a foreign text or a list of answers used by students, often illicitly, as an aid in lessons, examinations, etc
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short for cribbage
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cribbage the discard pile
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Also called: cribwork. a framework of heavy timbers laid in layers at right angles to one another, used in the construction of foundations, mines, etc
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a storage area for floating logs contained by booms
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a packed lunch taken to work
verb
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(tr) to put or enclose in or as if in a crib; furnish with a crib
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informal (tr) to steal (another's writings or thoughts)
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informal (intr) to copy either from a crib or from someone else during a lesson or examination
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(tr) to line (a construction hole) with timber beams, logs, or planks
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informal (intr) to grumble
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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cribsimple
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cribssimple
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have cribbedperfect
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has cribbedperfect
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am cribbingprogressive
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are cribbingprogressive
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is cribbingprogressive
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have been cribbingperfect progressive
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has been cribbingperfect progressive
Past
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cribbedsimple
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had cribbedperfect
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was cribbingprogressive
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were cribbingprogressive
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had been cribbingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of crib
before 1000; Middle English cribbe, Old English crib ( b ); cognate with Dutch krib, German Krippe; cf. crèche
Explanation
A crib is a bed with high sides that babies sleep in. To crib is to cheat, like copying off someone else during an exam. How babyish! A crib is a small, cozy bed that has high sides known as slats. The slats keep the baby from falling out. To crib is different — it means to cheat, especially by copying or stealing information. If you stole an answer key to a test, you cribbed it. If you friend told you the answers to some homework, you cribbed the answers. Cribbing is dishonest.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Often described as monstrous, irredeemable from the crib and the personification of malice, Cathy is both Eve and serpent in Steinbeck’s heavy-handed biblical allegory.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026
He built the baby crib that welcomed a couple’s first child.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
One thing we didn’t want to bring was a travel crib, so I filtered carefully for vacation rentals that had one.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026
The office belonged to head coach Sean McVay, and now it features walls painted pink and light blue and a crib, a changing table and a menagerie of stuffed animals.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 10, 2026
That’s probably so he doesn’t wake up Hector who’s asleep in the crib in the corner, but there’s something about him that’s kind of twitchy.
From "The Benefits of Being an Octopus" by Ann Braden
Both fine and applied arts make up the show, which includes objects ranging from paintings and prints to cribs, cabinets, light fixtures and hardware.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 5, 2026
The findings, published in the journal Nature, show that the structures known as queen cells, sometimes called "royal cribs," are much more than protective containers.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 23, 2026
California has recently banned the use of the forever chemicals in cosmetics, clothing, food packaging, cribs and firefighting foam.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2024
Targaryens often place dragon eggs in cribs with their highborn babies with the hope that their hatchlings will naturally bond with them, which doesn’t always happen.
From Salon ● Jul. 23, 2024
We used the dresser drawers as cribs and the kids slept with us or on fold-out cots.
From "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother" by James McBride
Critic W. David Marx, looking to sum up the curiously stagnant opening decades of the 21st century, cribbed a phrase from one of its enduring icons for the title of his book “Blank Space.”
From Salon ● Aug. 29, 2026
They’ve sometimes cribbed the language of corporate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, labeling introverts as an underrepresented group, flagging bias against introverts when hiring and promoting, and referring to extroverts who support introverts as allies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 23, 2025
She was 17 when they wed, beginning a royal partnership that seemed cribbed from a fairytale and would span almost seven decades.
From Barron's ● Oct. 25, 2025
Those mirrors, reflecting one another in a white-walled interior, transform a modestly scaled architectural space into something like a vast, vacant landscape cribbed from “Dune.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2024
It would perhaps be unfair to say that the Romans cribbed their calendar from “decadent” Egypt, but not unfair by much.
From "Circumference" by Nicholas Nicastro
As a teaser trailer released late last year noted, with a bit of cribbing from Peter Jackson, “the age of toys is over.”
From Salon ● Feb. 19, 2026
Firefighters secured the truck with “a grip hoist, grade 100 chain, and 6-inch vehicle strap cribbing, straps to keep the massively heavy vehicle from rolling any further forward,” fire officials posted on Facebook.
From Washington Times ● Dec. 26, 2023
In addition to grading the terrain to make the slopes gentler, he added powerful drainage systems and timber-and-concrete cribbing to keep structures in place.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 11, 2023
The discipline already had a “massive plagiarism problem” with students borrowing computer code from friends or cribbing it from the internet, said MacKellar.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 9, 2023
He slowly raised up his eyes, shame-facedly, like a schoolboy detected cribbing, when the master steals up behind.
From Murder Point A Tale of Keewatin by Coningsby Dawson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
