CREEPING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does creeping mean? 

• CREEPING (noun)
  The noun CREEPING has 1 sense:

1. a slow mode of locomotion on hands and knees or dragging the body

  Familiarity information: CREEPING used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CREEPING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A slow mode of locomotion on hands and knees or dragging the body

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

crawl; crawling; creep; creeping

Context example:

the traffic moved at a creep

Hypernyms ("creeping" is a kind of...):

locomotion; travel (self-propelled movement)

Derivation:

creep (move slowly; in the case of people or animals with the body near the ground)

 Context examples 

Then followed the wild upward leap and tattoo of flutters, the pressing as of an iron band about his forehead, the creeping of the dizziness into his brain.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

What old women call the horrors, have been creeping over me from head to foot.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He could feel a flush of warm blood creeping up his face.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Do you not see how, of late, this monster has been creeping into knowledge experimentally.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Then One Eye, creeping and crawling, every sense on the alert, every hair radiating infinite suspicion, joined her.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

What can you expect, when you take one's breath away, creeping in like a burglar, and letting cats out of bags like that?

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Do you feel a creeping, shrinking sensation, Watson, when you stand before the serpents in the Zoo, and see the slithery, gliding, venomous creatures, with their deadly eyes and wicked, flattened faces?

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As the glacier thins and loses mass, both sliding and creeping become more difficult, and the glacier's flow slows as a result.

(NASA Finds Asian Glaciers Slowed by Ice Loss, NASA)

Creeping to his side, we looked over the rocks.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

My fears were all back upon me, and every nerve creeping with horror.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)