Crabbed
adj, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 simple past and past participle of crab form-of, participle, past
- 1 Bad-tempered or cantankerous.
"[…]O, she is / Ten times more gentle than her father's crabb'd, / And he's composed of harshness."
- 2 Cramped, bent.
"A wrinkled crabbed man they picture thee, Old Winter, with a rugged beard as grey As the long moss upon the apple-tree; […]"
- 3 Crowded together and difficult to read.
- 4 Pointed at an angle to the runway during approach and landing to compensate for a crosswind.
"Unlike most aircraft, the B-52's fully-steerable landing gear allows it to land crabbed and stay crabbed throughout rollout without destroying its tires."
- 5 Performed with one's aircraft pointed at an angle to the runway to compensate for a crosswind; performed with nonzero crab.
"The Ercoupe can't be cross-controlled, so it has to make a crabbed approach in a crosswind rather than using the sideslip technique."
- 1 annoyed and irritable wordnet
Example
More examples"[…]O, she is / Ten times more gentle than her father's crabb'd, / And he's composed of harshness."
Etymology
From Middle English crabbed; equivalent to crab + -ed.
Related phrases
More for "crabbed"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.