[Not known before 17th c., and perh. formed from CRAMP sb. or v. But an adj. crampe cramped, seized or affected with cramp, occurs in OF. (cf. goutte-crampe in Littré), and the word is old in Teutonic: Icel. krapp-r, for earlier Norse *kramp-r contracted, strait, narrow, OHG. chramph, cramf, forcibly squeezed together, crooked, f. Teut. vb. stem krimpan, kramp, krumpen, to press together with force, compress, for which see note to CRAMP, sb.1 In OE. the only trace of the word is in the adj. crompeht as a gloss of folialis; cf. ‘foliatum curbutum’ in Corpus Glossary (Hessels) 67.]
1. Difficult to make out, understand or decipher; crabbed.
Cramp word: a word difficult to pronounce or understand.
1674. N. Fairfax, Bulk & Selv., Contents, Doctor More’s cramp argument brought off.
1683. A. Snape, Anat. Horse, IV. i. (1686), 151. The Cramp-names (as we call them) of the Muscles are no such hindrance … to me as … to most others.
1697. Potter, Antiq. Greece, II. xx. (1715), 362. Proposing Riddles and cramp Questions.
1708. Brit. Apollo, No. 29. 2/1. Your Lawyer’s … Cramp Law Terms.
1731. Wodrow, Corr. (1843), III. 481. It’s pity a gentleman should write in so cramp a style, as to need a Dictionary at the margin and the foot of the page.
1858. Lit. Churchman, IV. 407/1. The cramp Latinity of Tertullian.
1887. Parish & Shaw, Kentish Gloss., Cramp-word, a word difficult to be understood. ‘Our new parson … uses so many of these cramp-words.’
b. In cramp handwriting now associated with CRAMPED, constrained, not written freely and distinctly.
1733. Fielding, Don Quix. in Eng., Introd. They are written in such damned cramp hands, you will never be able to read them.
1865. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., VII. XVIII. ii. 108. Handwriting, not too cramp for him.
2. Contracted, strait, narrow; cramping.
1785. Mrs. A. M. Bennett, Juvenile Indiscr. (1786), I. 30. The old gentleman made a cramp sort of a will.
1806–7. J. Beresford, Miseries Hum. Life (1826), XVIII. xii. 135. On your way to your seat in a cramp corner.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, Result, Wks. (Bohn), II. 135. There is a cramp limitation in their habit of thought … a tortoise’s instinct to hold hard to the ground.
1863. Hoyle’s Games Mod., 357 s.v. Billiards, Cramp-Games, those in which one player gives to another some apparently great advantages.
