Heading
or thieve a part out of money given to lay out for necessaries.
1772. Foote Nabob, Act i. There are a brace of birds and a hare, that I cribbed this morning out of a basket of game.
1846. T. Hood, Ode to Rae Wilson, Esqr., wks., vol. IV., p. 224. Yet sure of Heaven themselves, as if they'd cribb'd Th' impression of St. Peter's keys in wax.
1855. Robert Browning, Men and Women. Fra Lippo Lippi, ed. 1863, p. 351. Black and white I drew From good old gossips waiting to confess Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends.
1889. Answers, 27 July, page 141, col. 1. He knew that if the manuscript got about the Yankees would think it a smart thing to crib it.
2. (school and University).—To use a translation; to cheat at an examination; to plagiarise.
1841. Punch, vol. I., p. 177. Cribbing his answers from a tiny manual of knowledge, two inches by one-and-a-half in size, which he hides under his blotting-paper.
1856. T. Hughes, Tom Brown's School-days, pt. II., ch. iii. Finishing up with two highly moral lines extra, making ten in all, which he cribbed entire from one of his books.
To crack A crib.—See under Crack.
Cribbage-Face and Cribbage-Faced,
subs. and adj. phr. (common).—Pock-marked
and like
a cribbage-board. Otherwise
colander-faced, crumpet-faced,
pikelet-faced, and
mockered (q.v.).
French Synonyms. Avoir un grenier à lentilles (popular: a cock-loft, granary, or garret, for the storage of lentils); ne pas s'être assuré contre la grêle (popular: grêle = hail); un morceau de gruyère (popular: that cheese being honeycombed with holes); avoir un moule à gaufres (popular: moule = mould; gaufre—a cake); une écumoire (familiar: properly a skimmer); poèle à châtaignes (poèle = frying pan and châtaignes = chestnuts; the colander-like shovel for roasting chestnuts).
1785. Grose, Dict. Vulg. Tongue. Cribbage-faced: marked with the small-pox, the pits bearing a kind of resemblance to the holes in a cribbage-board.
Cribber, subs. (military).—A
grumbler. [A horse that gnaws
his crib or manger.] Cf., Cribb?er,
and for synonyms, see
Rusty-guts.
Cribbeys or Cribby-Islands, subs.
(old).—Blind alleys, courts, and
bye-ways; Fr., culs-de-sac.
Cribbing, verbal subs. (old).—1.
Food and Drink. Cf., Crib,
sense 1.
1656. R. Brome, A Jovial Crew. For all this ben cribbing and Peck let us then, Bowse a health to the gentry cofe of the ken.
2. (schools' and University and general).—Stealing; purloining; using a translation. Cf., Crib, subs., sense 4.
1862. Farrar, St. Winifred's, ch. xxxv. They would not call it stealing but bagging a thing, or, at the worst, cribbing it—concealing the villainy under a new name.
Crib-Biter, subs. (common).—An
inveterate grumbler. [Properly
a horse that worries his crib,
rack, manger, or groom, and at
the same time draws in his breath
so as to make the peculiar noise
called wind-sucking.] French
equivalents are un gourgousseur;
un rême; un renâcleur; and un
renaudeur.—See Cribber.
Crib-Cracker, subs. (general).—A
housebreaker.
