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Crimp vs Cramp - What's the difference?

crimp | cramp |

As nouns the difference between crimp and cramp

is that crimp is a fastener or a fastening method that secures parts by bending metal around a joint and squeezing it together, often with a tool that adds indentations to capture the parts while cramp is a painful contraction of a muscle which cannot be controlled.

As verbs the difference between crimp and cramp

is that crimp is to fasten by bending metal so that it squeezes around the parts to be fastened while cramp is (of a muscle) To contract painfully and uncontrollably.

As an adjective crimp

is easily crumbled; friable; brittle.

crimp

English

Etymology 1

(etyl) crempen, from (etyl) . Germanic etymology. Cognate to Dutch krimpen, via Middle Dutch crimpen, to Low German crimpen, Origins, p. 130, by Eric Partridge and to Faroese . From or cognate to Old Norse kreppa. Possible cognate to cramp.

Adjective

  • (obsolete) Easily crumbled; friable; brittle.
  • * J. Philips
  • Now the fowler treads the crimp earth.
  • (obsolete) Weak; inconsistent; contradictory.
  • * Arbuthnot
  • The evidence is crimp ; the witnesses swear backward and forward, and contradict themselves.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A fastener or a fastening method that secures parts by bending metal around a joint and squeezing it together, often with a tool that adds indentations to capture the parts.
  • The strap was held together by a simple metal crimp .
  • (obsolete, UK, dialect) A coal broker.
  • (De Foe)
  • (obsolete) One who decoys or entraps men into the military or naval service.
  • (Marryat)
  • (obsolete) A keeper of a low lodging house where sailors and emigrants are entrapped and fleeced.
  • (usually, in the plural) A hairstyle which has been crimped, or shaped so it bends back and forth in many short kinks.
  • (obsolete) A card game.
  • (Ben Jonson)

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To fasten by bending metal so that it squeezes around the parts to be fastened.
  • He crimped the wire in place.
  • To pinch and hold; to seize.
  • To style hair into a crimp.
  • To join the edges of food products. For example: Cornish pasty, pies, jiaozi, Jamaican patty, and sealed crustless sandwiches.
  • Etymology 2

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An agent making it his business to procure seamen, soldiers, etc., especially by seducing, decoying, entrapping, or impressing them. [Since the passing of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, applied to one who infringes sub-section 1 of this Act, i.e. to a person other than the owner, master, etc., who engages seamen without a license from the Board of Trade.]
  • * (rfdate)
  • When a master of a ship..has lost any of his hands, he applies to a crimp ..who makes it his business to seduce the men belonging to some other ship.
  • * (rfdate)
  • Trepanned into the West India Company's service by the crimps or silver-coopers as a common soldier.
  • * (rfdate)
  • Offering three guineas ahead to the crimps for every good able seaman.
  • * (rfdate)
  • I hear there are plenty of good men stowed away by the crimps at different places.
  • * (rfdate)
  • Sallying forth at night..he came near being carried off by a gang of crimps .
  • * (rfdate)
  • In the high and palmy days of the crimp , the pirate, the press-gang.

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To impress (seamen or soldiers); to entrap, to decoy.
  • Coaxing and courting with intent to crimp him. — Carlyle.
  • * (rfdate)
  • Plundering corn and crimping recruits.
  • * (rfdate)
  • Clutching at him, to crimp him or impress him.
  • * (rfdate)
  • The cruel folly which crimps a number of ignorant and innocent peasants, dresses them up in uniform..and sends them off to kill and be killed.
  • * (rfdate)
  • The Egyptian Government crimped negroes in the streets of Cairo.
  • * (rfdate)
  • Why not create customers in the Queen's dominions..instead of trying..to crimp them in other countries?

    References

    * *

    cramp

    English

    (wikipedia cramp)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A painful contraction of a muscle which cannot be controlled.
  • * Sir T. More
  • The cramp , divers nights, gripeth him in his legs.
  • That which confines or contracts; a restraint; a shackle; a hindrance.
  • * L'Estrange
  • A narrow fortune is a cramp to a great mind.
  • * Cowper
  • crippling his pleasures with the cramp of fear
  • A clamp for carpentry or masonry.
  • A piece of wood having a curve corresponding to that of the upper part of the instep, on which the upper leather of a boot is stretched to give it the requisite shape.
  • Derived terms

    * brain cramp * cramp ring * writer's cramp

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (of a muscle) To contract painfully and uncontrollably.
  • To prohibit movement or expression.
  • You're cramping my style.
  • * Layard
  • The mind may be as much cramped by too much knowledge as by ignorance.
  • To restrain to a specific physical position, as if with a cramp.
  • You're going to need to cramp the wheels on this hill.
  • * Ford
  • when the gout cramps my joints
  • To fasten or hold with, or as if with, a cramp.
  • (by extension) To bind together; to unite.
  • * Burke
  • The fabric of universal justice is well cramped and bolted together in all its parts.
  • To form on a cramp.
  • to cramp boot legs

    References

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