[f. the verb.]
1. The action of creeping; slow or stealthy motion. (lit. and fig.)
1818. Keats, Endym., I. 679. Until a gentle creep, A careful moving caught my waking ears.
1842. Wordsw., ‘Lyre! though such power.’ Or watch … The current as it plays In flashing leaps and stealthy creeps Adown a rocky maze.
1862. Thornbury, Turner, I. 264. There is a fine sense of terror and danger and adventure in Jason’s stealthy creep.
† b. Hawking. See quot. Obs.
1486. Bk. St. Albans, D j b. Yowre hawke fleeth at or to the Creepe when ye haue yowre hawke on yowre fyst and crepe softely to the Ryuer or to the pit, and stelith softeli to the brynke therof, and then cry huff, and bi that meane Nym a fowle.
2. A sensation as of things creeping over one’s body; a nervous shrinking or shiver of dread or horror. Usually in pl., the creeps or cold creeps (colloq.).
1862. Lytton, Haunted & Haunters, in Str. Story (1866), II. 391. I felt a creep of undefinable horror.
1879. A. Forbes, in Daily News, 21 Aug., 5/3. It [shell-fire] gives you the creeps all down the small of the back.
1884. Athenæum, 15 March, 340/1. The reader must cultivate ‘cold creeps’ upon the tales of his forefathers.
3. Coal-mining. The slow continuous bulging or rising up of the floor of a gallery owing to the superincumbent pressure upon the pillars. ‘Also any slow movement of mining ground’ (Raymond, Mining Gloss., 1881).
1813. Ann. Philos., II. 285. The pitmen were proceeding … through the old workings … the proper road being obstructed by a creep.
1867. W. W. Smyth, Coal & Coal-mining, 132. The creep … arises when the thill or underclay is soft, and the proportion of pillars to bords such that after a time a downward movement takes place; the pillars then force the clay to rise upwards in the bords.
1867. Ann. Reg., 176. He advised that it should be buried in some of the creeps or crevices of some old pit-workings.
4. A low arch under a railway embankment; an opening in a hedge or other enclosure, for an animal to creep or pass through. Cf. CREEP-HOLE.
1875. W. M‘Ilwraith, Guide to Wigtownshire, 37. A creep for cattle, on the Wigtown Railway.
1884. Jefferies, Red Deer, x. 188. Through this hedge they [poachers] leave holes, or ‘creeps,’ for the pheasants to run through.
5. = CREEPER 5.
1889. Chamb. Jrnl., Jan., 28/2. Boatmen went to work with creeps or drags to search for the body.
6. Comb., as † creep-window (cf. sense 4). Also CREEP-HOLE, CREEP-MOUSE.
1664. Atkyns, Orig. Printing, Ded. B j. The least Creep-window robs the whole House; the least Errour in War is not to be redeemed.
