(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.
Slither
Definition:
(v. i.) To slide; to glide.
Example Sentences:
(1) The speed of the snow led to the closure of roads, including the M62 trans-Pennine motorway where the eastbound carriageway was closed after traffic slithered around on the steep ascent and descent between Rochdale and Huddersfield.
(2) The recipes veer from the incredibly simple, such as stir-fried potato slithers with chillies to the more elaborate, such as dry-braised fish with pork in spicy sauce.
(3) On this, my fourth visit, Makoko is as I’ve always known it: the tiny “jetty” from which visitors and residents board dugout canoes into the labyrinths of the floating settlement; the grey-black sludge that passes for lagoon water; the tangle of boats impatiently slithering through the labyrinth of waterways, making the traffic of Makoko reminiscent of the notorious Lagos roads.
(4) Rory Carroll (@rorycarroll72) Slithering and sliding in sewer gunk and they do it with a sense of humour.
(5) The result is a freewheeling joyride through genre cinema and literature: there are psychopathic mafia bosses, insane motorcycle gangs, xenophobically sketched triads, corrupt secret agents and cynical movie producers – their stories twist and interconnect, slithering around the lives of our protagonists.
(6) And perhaps he buys something to dig the Independent out of the hole it's always close to slithering into.
(7) As they poured men forward in search of a decisive winning goal there was space for Leeds to exploit on the break and when Aidan White sent Ross McCormack racing away down the right flank in the 90th minute, his tame chip from 25 yards out somehow slipped through the fingers of the teenage debutant keeper, Jack Bonham, and slithered agonisingly over the line to condemn Watford to the play-offs.
(8) There is also a slither of hope that a government drive to address the UK’s housing shortage could help first-time buyers.
(9) This strange goon squad of sub-Clarksons, bedroom anarchists, useful idiots and hardcore woman haters gives most of us the creeps and they will be slithering about on Sunday.
(10) The smell of putrefication could be sensed from a distance and on examination large white worms could be seen slithering in the decomposing tissue.
(11) The one-man freak show that appeals to the anarchist (even in me) will slither into the greasy maw of the US Republican party.
(12) An earlier version said that Holyrood controls only a small slither, rather than sliver, of its own spending.
(13) 5.33pm BST 17 min: City go up the other end and appeal for a penalty as Aguero slithers past Alcaraz on the right before being bumped over by the Wigan defender.
(14) He and my father had pitched their tent in the stolen corner of a farmer's lot, and so it was from inside the fence that my brother saw, not 10 feet away from him, the newborn calf slither on to the grass, unfurl its legs, and stand.
(15) Perhaps some visitors from LA had lost big at the casinos and had to slither home empty-handed.
(16) Iran weren't able to clear properly after that first attack and Onazi's low slitherer from the edge of the area went inches wide!
(17) The rain eased in the second period but, with the pitch waterlogged in places, players slithered all over the place and accurate passing became impossible.
(18) Some colon-cleansing tablets contain a polymerising agent that turns your faeces into something like a plastic, so that when a massive rubbery poo snake slithers into your toilet you can stare back at it and feel vindicated in your purchase.
(19) It is common slither from parliament to a position on the board of a big company, or to creep from a tabloid role into a position advising leaders of a sleazy government.
(20) Half a million children are now in “super-sized” classes , while British schools are slithering back to the selection and social segregation of the old days.