Creeping
noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 The act of something that creeps.
"It is indubitably certain, therefore, that he is able to attend, and actually attends, to all things at the same moment; to the motions of a seed, or a leaf, or an atom; to the creepings of a worm, the flutterings of an insect, and the journeys of a mite […]"
- 2 a slow mode of locomotion on hands and knees or dragging the body wordnet
- 1 present participle and gerund of creep form-of, gerund, participle, present
"Then, in January, a creeping tsunami of train cancellations, triggered by major staff absences as a result of the aggressive transmissibility of Omicron, heaped further misery on rail users."
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"I'm getting a spare tire around my waist. I guess it's middle age creeping up on me."
Etymology
From Middle English crepynge, crepinde, crepende, crepande, from Old English crēopende, from Proto-Germanic *kreupandz, present participle of Proto-Germanic *kreupaną (“to creep, crawl”), equivalent to creep + -ing.
From Middle English creping, crepynge, from Old English crēopung, equivalent to creep + -ing.
More for "creeping"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.