crisp

adj

1. (dated)Senses relating to curliness.

   “crisp hair”

   “A certeyn lightning on his headtop gliſtered harmeleſſe. / His criſp locks frizeling, his temples prettelye ſtroaking.”

   “Bulls are more Criſpe vpon the Fore-head than Covves; […]”

   “"The Stranger" was a dark, comely, youthful man's head, portentously looking out of a dark, shaded ground, and ambiguously smiling. There was no discoverable drapery; the dark head, with its crisp, curly, jetty hair, seemed just disentangling itself from out of curtains and clouds.”

   “[T]he short, soft, and crisp hair resembles Astrachan wool, […]”

2. (archaic, obsolete)Senses relating to curliness.

   “[T]hree times did they drinke / Vpon agreement of ſvvift Seuerns floud, / VVho then affrighted vvith their bloudie lookes, / Ran fearefully among the trembling reedes, / And hid his criſpe-head in the hollovv banke, / Bloud-ſtained vvith theſe valiant combatants, […]”

   “You Nimphs cald Nayades of yͤ vvindring brooks, / VVith your ſedg'd crovvnes, and euer-harmleſſe lookes, / Leaue your criſpe channels, and on this greene-Lane / Anſvvere your ſummons, Iuno do's command.”

   “The elder ladies' wrinkles curled much crisper / As they beheld; […]”

   “[T]here was a fresh smell of seaweed, and the tiny ripples curled crisp and white along the pebbly bays.”

3. (archaic)Senses relating to curliness.

   “Feathered VVater Moſs. Branched. Leaves criſp, feathered, undulated, pointing tvvo vvays.”

4. (obsolete)Senses relating to curliness.

   “One whyle hée at my necke dooth ſnatch / Another whyle my cléere criſp legges be ſtriueth for too catch, / Or trippes at mée: and euerywhere the vauntage he dooth watch.”

   “Common Mother [Nature] […] vvhoſe ſelfeſame Mettle […] Engenders the blacke Toad, and Adder blevv, / The gilded Nevvt, and eyeleſſe venom'd VVorme, / VVith all th'abhorred Births belovv Criſpe Heauen, / VVhereon Hyperions quickning fire doth ſhine: […]”

   “[…] Fryer, you muſt leave / Your neat criſpe Clarret, and fall to your Syder / Avvhile; […]”

5. Senses relating to brittleness.

   “The crisp snow crunched underfoot.”

   “Our customers in the produce department expect crisp apples and firm bananas.”

   “I Craſſhe [crush] as a thynge dothe that is cryſpe or britell bytwene ones tethe: le creſpe, prime cõiuga.”

   “In Froſty vveather, Muſicke vvithin doores ſoundeth better. VVhich may be, by reaſon, not of the Diſpoſition of the Aire, but of the VVood or String of the Inſtrument, vvhich is made more Criſpe, and ſo more porous and hollovv: And vve ſee that Old Lutes ſound better than Nevv, for the ſame reaſon.”

   “[M]y vvife […] uſed every art to magnify the merit of her daughter. If the cakes at tea eat ſhort and criſp, they vvere made by Olivia: if the gooſeberry vvine vvas vvell knit, the gooſeberries vvere of her gathering: […]”

6. (figuratively)Senses relating to brittleness.

   “And this piece of laurel is from Vaucluse! […] What an exquisite dry old, vital, young-looking, everlasting twig it is! It has been plucked nine months, and looks as hale and as crisp as if it would last ninety years.”

   “A crisp fresh odour of starch wafted from the cardboard-stiff jacket which covered a well-built, Sunday athlete's frame.”

7. (figuratively)Senses relating to brittleness.

   “An expert, given a certain query, will often come up with a crisp answer: “yes” or “no”.”

   “A very estimable young person, Miss Sturch […] such a well-regulated mind, and such a crisp touch on the piano; […]”

   “I hoped, of course, that he would make it crisp and remove himself at an early date, for when the moment came for the balloon to go up I didn't want to be hampered by an audience. When you're pushing someone into a lake, nothing embarrasses you more than having the front seats filled up with goggling spectators.”

   “Transit Patrolman Alexander looked a little upset. He was seeing for the first time the translation of the crisp, cold official words of police procedure into reality and he was groping.”

   “Murray's eyes remembered the woman: small and crisp and clean and taking the little boy by the hand, carefully fussing over him, smiling at him.”

8. (figuratively)Senses relating to brittleness.

   “All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it!”

   “In the long summer the climate much resembles that of Sindh; there are the same fiery suns playing upon the naked surface with a painful dazzle, cool crisp nights, and clouds of dust.”

9. (figuratively)Senses relating to brittleness.

   “He sat in a small room with benches where Santino had placed him, handed him the crisp, freshly withdrawn fifty-dollar bills, while Santino set about getting a bail bondsman.”

10. (figuratively)Senses relating to brittleness.

    “This new television set has a very crisp image.”

11. (figuratively)Senses relating to brittleness.
12. (figuratively)Senses relating to brittleness.

noun

1. (Ireland, UK, in-plural)Senses relating to something brittle.

   “Edward, give me another of those delicious olives. / What's that? Potato crisps? No, I can't endure them.”

   “I was buying some crisps and pop when there was a noisy clatter on the bare floorboards and something hit my right heel. It was a white cue ball.”

   “Turn you inside out and lick you like a crisp packet”

   “As I sit in front of the TV angrily eating crisps, it comes to me. I will challenge her to a race.”

2. (Ireland, UK, broadly, in-plural)Senses relating to something brittle.

   “kale crisps    prawn crisp”

   “When she’s not writing, Katie spends her time with her husband and two kids, and their dogs: Wotsit, the King Charles spaniel, and Skips, the three-legged rescue dog. (And yes, they are both named after crisps!)”

3. (Canada, US)Senses relating to something brittle.
4. (dated, slang)Senses relating to something brittle.
5. (also, figuratively)Senses relating to something brittle.

   “He bears my name—Glendinning. I will disown it; were it like this dress, I would tear my name off from me, and burn it till it shriveled to a crisp!”

   “And, oh, to think she should meet such a death at last!—a sitting over the red-hot stove at three o'clock in the morning and went to sleep and fell on it and was actually roasted! Not just frizzled up a bit, but literally roasted to a crisp!”

6. (dialectal)Senses relating to something brittle.

   “Alon[zo]. Anon they’l cut off ſlivers from us, as they did from the vvhole Ox, in St. James’s Fair. / Gonz[alo]. Oh, ’tis intollerable: methinks I hear a great ſhe Devil, call for [a] Groats vvorth of the Criſpe of my Countenance.—They are all for Griſtle.”

7. (obsolete)Senses relating to something curled.

   “They are proud, and vveare their hayre pretty long, and about their criſpes vvreath a valuable Shaſh or Tulipant; […]”

8. (obsolete)Senses relating to something curled.

   “Vpon her head a ſiluer criſp ſhe pind, / Looſe vvauing on her ſhoulders vvith the vvind.”

   “[T]he nevv deuiſed names of Stuffes and Colours, Crispe, Tamet, Pluſh, Tabine, Caffa, […]”

verb

1. (transitive)Senses relating to brittleness.

   “to crisp bacon by frying it”

   “c. 1752, Elizabeth Moxon, English Housewifry, Leeds: James Lister, “To make Hare Soop,” p. 6, […] put it into a Dish, with a little stew’d Spinage, crisp’d Bread, and a few forc’d-meat Balls.”

   “Eliza was fretful at his absences, and brought him his dinner crisped and dried from its long heating in the oven.”

2. (dated, figuratively, transitive)Senses relating to brittleness.

   “It was the form of a man of middle age, the hair white, but the beard only crisped with grey,”

   “[…] Monte Pellegrino, a huge, inordinate mass of pinkish rock, hardly crisped with the faintest vegetation, looming up to heaven from the sea.”

   “The leaves of the chestnut were crisped with gold.”

3. (intransitive)Senses relating to brittleness.

   “to put celery into ice water to crisp”

   “[…] the air chilled at sunset, the ground crisped, and ere dusk, a hoar frost was insidiously stealing over growing grass and unfolding bud.”

   “The dew is dried that drenched our hide / Or washed about our way; / And where we drank, the puddled bank / Is crisping into clay.”

   “Her hair feels fake, like a wig, but I think it is just crisping up under the dye and Frizz-Ease.”

   “[…] the flick of the wrist with which one rolls the half-set wafer on to the handle of a wooden spoon and then flips it on to the drying rack to crisp.”

4. (dated, intransitive)Senses relating to brittleness.

   “[…] everything had become so still that the crisping of the snow under foot might be heard nearly half a verst round.”

   “[…] the wheels [of the carriage] made their little crisping over the fine metal of the driveway.”

   “1915, Clotilde Graves (as Richard Dehan), “A Dish of Macaroni” in Off Sandy Hook, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, p. 39, […] her light footsteps and crisping draperies retreated along the passage,”

   “The same peculiar crisping or crackling sound […] was heard this morning in every direction […] the ‘noise accompanying the aurora,’”

   “[…] the hot pavement by the playing field where the trees crisp together.”

5. (dated, transitive)Senses relating to curliness.

   “[…] those crisped snaky golden locks / Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,”

   “1609, Douay-Rheims Bible, 2 Chronicles 4.5, […] the brimme therof was as it were the brimme of a chalice, or of a crisped lilie:”

   “1630, Michael Drayton, The Muses Elizium, London: John Waterson, “The Description of Elizium,” The fift Nimphall, p. 44, The Louer with the Myrtle Sprayes Adornes his crisped Tresses:”

   “[…] the well known rhubarb of our gardens, with roundish crisped leaves.”

   “For a time I was made to forget that my skin was dark and my hair crisped.”

6. (dated, figuratively, transitive)Senses relating to curliness.

   “[…] the crisped Brooks, / Rowling on Orient Pearl and sands of Gold”

   “1818, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 4, London: John Murray, stanza 53, p. 29, I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream Wherein that image shall for ever dwell;”

   “[…] when the breeze crisps the pool, you may see the image of the breakers, and a likeness of the foam.”

   “[…] he saw a flying squall darkening and crisping suddenly the tide.”

7. (dated, figuratively, transitive)Senses relating to curliness.

   “[…] he consider’d what an infinity of Muscles these laughing Rascals threw into a convulsive motion at the same time; whether we regard the spasms of the Diaphragm and all the muscles of respiration, the horrible rictus of the mouth, the distortion of the lower jaw, the crisping of the nose, twinkling of the eyes, or sphaerical convexity of the cheeks, with the tremulous succussion of the whole human body:”

   “Phillotson saw his wife turn and take the note, and the bend of her pretty head as she read it, her lips slightly crisped, to prevent undue expression under fire of so many young eyes.”

   “[…] a slow torsion and crisping of all his nerves, beginning at his ankles, spread to every corner of his body till he had to shut his fists and teeth against the blind impulse to leap from his bed screaming.”

   “Ah, here was a fellow coming! And instinctively he crisped his hands that were buried in his pockets, and ran over to himself his opening words.”

   “They [the shark’s teeth] were shaped like a man’s fingers when they are crisped like claws.”

8. (UK, dated, dialectal, transitive)Senses relating to curliness.
9. (dated, intransitive)Senses relating to curliness.

   “The Sauoie Lettuce hath very large leaues ſpread vpon the grounde, at the firſt comming vp broade, cut, or gaſht about the edges, criſping or curling lightly this or that way, not vnlike to the leaues of garden Endiue, […]”

   “[…] a few shreds of purple bloom on a brown, crisping tuft of self-heal”

10. (dated, figuratively, intransitive)Senses relating to curliness.

    “1630, Henry Hawkins (translator), Certaine selected epistles of S. Hierome, Saint-Omer: The English College Press, “The Epitaphe of S. Paula,” p. 96, Hitherto we haue sayled with a fore-wind, & our sliding ship hath plowed vp the crisping waues of the Sea at ease.”

    “1832, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters,” Choric Song, V., in Poems, London: Moxon, p. 114, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray:”

    “[…] the quick yielding of the waves that crisp and curl and ripple about my body.”

11. (dated, figuratively, intransitive)Senses relating to curliness.

    “[…] she gave no sign of the wave of repugnance that swept over her except that her fingers suddenly crisped.”

name

1. A surname.
2. A place in the United States:
3. A place in the United States:
4. A place in the United States: