creeping

creeping
    n 1: a slow mode of locomotion on hands and knees or dragging
         the body; "a crawl was all that the injured man could
         manage"; "the traffic moved at a creep" [syn: {crawl},
         {crawling}, {creep}, {creeping}]
    

Creep \Creep\ (kr[=e]p), v. t. [imp. {Crept} (kr[e^]pt) ({Crope}
   (kr[=o]p), Obs.); p. p. {Crept}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Creeping}.]
   [OE. crepen, creopen, AS. cre['o]pan; akin to D. kruipen, G.
   kriechen, Icel. krjupa, Sw. krypa, Dan. krybe. Cf. {Cripple},
   {Crouch}.]
   1. 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.
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            Ye that walk
            The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep.
                                                  --Milton.
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   2. To move slowly, feebly, or timorously, as from
      unwillingness, fear, or weakness.
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            The whining schoolboy . . . creeping, like snail,
            Unwillingly to school.                --Shak.
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            Like a guilty thing, I creep.         --Tennyson.
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   3. 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.
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            The sophistry which creeps into most of the books of
            argument.                             --Locke.
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            Of this sort are they which creep into houses, and
            lead captive silly women.             --2. Tim. iii.
                                                  6.
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   4. 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.
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   5. To move or behave with servility or exaggerated humility;
      to fawn; as, a creeping sycophant.
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            To come as humbly as they used to creep. --Shak.
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   6. 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. "Creeping vines." --Dryden.
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   7. 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.
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   8. To drag in deep water with creepers, as for recovering a
      submarine cable.
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Creeping \Creep"ing\, a.
   1. Crawling, or moving close to the ground. "Every creeping
      thing." --Gen. vi. 20.
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   2. Growing along, and clinging to, the ground, or to a wall,
      etc., by means of rootlets or tendrils.
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            Casements lined with creeping herbs.  --Cowper.
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   {Ceeping crowfoot} (Bot.), a plant, the {Ranunculus repens}.
      

   {Creeping snowberry}, an American plant ({Chiogenes
      hispidula}) with white berries and very small round leaves
      having the flavor of wintergreen.
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154 Moby Thesaurus words for "creeping":
      all fours, ambling, amphibian, anguine, atiptoe, atmospherics,
      batrachian, blaring, blasting, blind spot, cautious, cautiousness,
      circumspect, circumspection, claudicant, colubriform, crawl,
      crawling, creep, creeping like snail, crocodilian, deliberate,
      deliberateness, deliberation, drawl, drift, easy, fade-out, fading,
      faltering, flagging, foot-dragging, froggy, gentle, gradual,
      gumshoeing, halting, hobbled, hobbling, honeycombed, idle,
      idleness, indolence, indolent, inertia, inertness, interference,
      languid, languor, languorous, laziness, lazy, leisureliness,
      leisurely, lentitude, lentor, limping, lizardlike, lumbering,
      moderate, nightwalking, noise, on all fours, on tippytoe,
      on tiptoe, ophidian, padding, permeated, pokiness, poking, poky,
      prowling, pussyfooting, reception, relaxed, reluctance, reluctant,
      repent, reptant, reptatorial, reptile, reptilelike, reptilian,
      reptiliform, reptiloid, saturated, sauntering, saurian, scrabble,
      scramble, serpentiform, serpentile, serpentine, serpentlike,
      serpentoid, shot through, shuffling, sidling, slack, slackness,
      slinking, slithering, sloth, slothful, slow, slow as death,
      slow as molasses, slow as slow, slow-crawling, slow-foot,
      slow-going, slow-legged, slow-moving, slow-paced, slow-poky,
      slow-running, slow-sailing, slow-stepped, slowness, sluggardy,
      sluggish, sluggishness, snail-paced, snaillike, snakelike, snaking,
      snaky, sneaking, staggering, static, stealing, strolling, swarming,
      teeming, tentative, tentativeness, tippytoe, tiptoe, tiptoeing,
      toadish, toddling, tortoiselike, tottering, trudging, turtlelike,
      unhurried, viperiform, viperish, viperlike, viperoid, viperous,
      vipery, waddling, worming