(v. t.) To move along the ground, or on any other surface, on the belly, as a worm or reptile; to move as a child on the hands and knees; to crawl.
(v. t.) To move slowly, feebly, or timorously, as from unwillingness, fear, or weakness.
(v. t.) To move in a stealthy or secret manner; to move imperceptibly or clandestinely; to steal in; to insinuate itself or one's self; as, age creeps upon us.
(v. t.) To slip, or to become slightly displaced; as, the collodion on a negative, or a coat of varnish, may creep in drying; the quicksilver on a mirror may creep.
(v. t.) To move or behave with servility or exaggerated humility; to fawn; as, a creeping sycophant.
(v. t.) To grow, as a vine, clinging to the ground or to some other support by means of roots or rootlets, or by tendrils, along its length.
(v. t.) To have a sensation as of insects creeping on the skin of the body; to crawl; as, the sight made my flesh creep. See Crawl, v. i., 4.
(v. i.) To drag in deep water with creepers, as for recovering a submarine cable.
(n.) The act or process of creeping.
(n.) A distressing sensation, or sound, like that occasioned by the creeping of insects.
(n.) A slow rising of the floor of a gallery, occasioned by the pressure of incumbent strata upon the pillars or sides; a gradual movement of mining ground.
Example Sentences:
(1) The estimated Ki's for inhibition of myocardial creep currents were 3 microM for dodecylamin, 10 micron for quinacrine, and 4 microM for 3',4'-dichlorobenzamil.
(2) As we walk away from the restaurant, he looks up an interview (with himself) on his iPhone and announces his musical credentials: "Yup, two Radiohead songs in both 'Clueless' and 'Romeo and Juliet', back when all anybody knew was 'Creep'.
(3) Diarrhoea occurred in some animals after weaning, but did not occur in pigs which did not have access to creep food before weaning.
(4) The osteoconductive properties were promising; creeping bone formation could be observed, although no complete fusion had been achieved at 24 weeks.
(5) Years ahead of its time, it saw each song presented theatrically, the musicians concealed in the wings (although Bowie said that they kept creeping on to the stage, literally unable to resist the spotlight) and with Bowie performing on a cherry-picker and on a giant hand, both of which kept breaking down.
(6) These differences in creep force can be qualitatively accounted for by differences in sarcomere dynamics.
(7) One-year follow-up studies showed that 2 patients with a malignant gastric tumour had recurrence 9 months after the combined treatment; I patient has recurrence in the same terms after similar treatment of creeping benign adenoma.
(8) However, the PTFE suture did exhibit some viscoelastic characteristics (hysteresis and creep) that begin to approach the chordal behavior.
(9) [ View the story "Creeping Sharia - A snapshot" on Storify ] • Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree • This article was amended on 17 April 2012.
(10) While the protesters' demands are varied, their unanimous target is Beijing – its creeping influence over the city's boardrooms, newspapers, classrooms and courts.
(11) The tetrapeptide Gly-His-Arg-Pro at comparable concentrations decreased the modulus and increased the creep to a lesser degree; when combined with Gly-Pro-Arg-Pro it enhanced the effectiveness of the latter.
(12) This type of ventilation brought about changes in viscous properties, measured during creep and oscillation of the mucus, which would be expected to reduce mucus clearance in vivo.
(13) But fresh evidence that waiting times are creeping up, despite David Cameron's pledge to keep them low, has forced Lansley to change tack and impose an extra treatment directive on the NHS.
(14) His free-kick was decent, he whipped the ball around the ball, but it was half-cleared before it could creep inside the far post.
(15) Since prosthetic meniscal replacement may be performed in the setting of normal articular cartilage, a prosthesis will be required to match the exact joint configuration, induce the same lubricity, produce the same coefficient of friction, and absorb and dampen the same joint forces (without incurring significant creep or abrasion) as does the normal meniscus.
(16) Calcification was slightly heavier and the degree of creep was significantly greater in the mitral position.
(17) The effect outside Syria’s borders, of refugees and the creep of global terror, continues to raise the stakes.
(18) Diacridines linked by a rigid, polar but neutral dicarbamoylpyrazole chain retain slow exchange kinetics, have a greatly reduced potential "creep rate", and possess good in vitro potency and significant in vivo antileukemic activity.
(19) Acceleration of the creep test by increasing the test temperature permits an estimation whether the creep properties of a material are within the required limits within a week.
(20) The lessons of creeping loss of control made us decide to go private again if we possibly could.
Decrepit
Definition:
(a.) Broken down with age; wasted and enfeebled by the infirmities of old age; feeble; worn out.
Example Sentences:
(1) In 1972, he launched a more ambitious plan by buying Hintlesham Hall, a decrepit grade-11 listed building in Suffolk, converting it into a home and three restaurants and taking over the Hintlesham festival held there.
(2) Some of Rio's most impressive architecture can still be found in and around Praça XV, but it has been throttled by modernity, its colonial charm obliterated by a concrete flyover, now black and decrepit, built directly over the top of it.
(3) Caine’s Guardian reader may be decrepit and disillusioned but still oozes wit and discerning taste.
(4) I really want to say thank you for the kind way my decrepit body was washed; how, in the middle of the night when I felt overwhelmed, a nurse stopped what she was doing and held my hand; the cake covered in Smarties the catering staff brought me for my birthday; the smiles and jokes with the staff to pass the long days; and Mr Burbos (one of the handsome consultant surgeons) who has been so generous with his time and care.
(5) One disingenuous objection to fairer taxing of property pleads for cash-poor, asset-rich old folk rattling around in drafty, decrepit mansions.
(6) This is not because it’s a decrepit, leaking ship, as often depicted, but because every modern healthcare system in the world will always need more money, more research and more beds, to give patients the best chance of treatment.
(7) The latest WHO figures underscore Ebola’s asymmetric spread, as it travels through densely populated communities with decrepit health facilities and poor public awareness campaigns.
(8) The Walworth Farce, which opens at the National Theatre next week, focuses on a tyrannical Irishman who has kept his two sons locked in a decrepit flat since the trio arrived in London almost two decades before.
(9) Another avenue is supporting the decrepit political opposition group that exists.
(10) Particularly striking is the fact that Britain will end up spending less as a proportion of its national income than even the US, the international byword for a decrepit public sector.
(11) They have already been biting the community – one of my children's school is a decrepit building, which was built in the 70s, a mass of concrete with rotten windows and broken doors.
(12) This did not happen overnight, and the sorry conduct of the referendum campaign was only the latest indication of the decrepit state of our politics: dominated by shameless appeals to fear, as though hope were a currency barely worth trading in, the British public had no such thing as a better nature, and a brighter future held no appeal.
(13) This fact, which confirms the decrepitation theorem, could explain the explosion inside the tissues observed in surgical application of the Nd:YAG laser.
(14) But the worst are shikumen s, no matter how historically significant or beautiful, that have become so decrepit and grimy from decades of overcrowding, heavy communal usage and minimal infrastructural investment by residents and local authorities.
(15) Many were in decrepit tower-blocks, sky high and matchstick small.
(16) I have known the squalid, damp bedrooms of the decrepit council house; the wait for the child benefit to buy the next meal; the reality of a bag of chips being a cheaper and more comforting alternative to a nutritious meal; the constant linkage of school to failure throughout our family generations; and the inevitable lure of cigarettes and alcohol to ease the pain.
(17) In tears and confusion, thousands of women, children and old men expelled from Srebrenica poured off buses yesterday at the decrepit air base in the town of Tuzla, northern Bosnia, accusing Serb rebels of murder and rape and the United Nations of indifference during the fall of the enclave.
(18) Earlier this month, more than 600 million people lost power when the country's decrepit electricity grid collapsed .
(19) The debt crisis that erupted in 2009 exposed the decrepit state of the country's structures.
(20) She looked forward to a life beyond the decrepit confines of the capital.