Definition of "crisp"

crisp

/kɹɪsp/

adjective
comparative crisper, superlative crispest
1. (of something seen or heard) Sharp, clearly defined.
2. Brittle; friable; in a condition to break with a short, sharp fracture.
  Quotations
  The cakes at tea ate short and crisp.
  1766, [Oliver Goldsmith], The Vicar of Wakefield: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I or II), Salisbury, Wiltshire: […] B. Collins, for F[rancis] Newbery, […]; reprinted London: Elliot Stock, 1885,
3. Possessing a certain degree of firmness and freshness.
  Quotations
  It [laurel] has been plucked nine months, and yet looks as hale and as crisp as if it would last ninety years.
  1820, Leigh Hunt, The Indicator
4. (of weather, air etc.) Dry and cold.
5. (of movement, action etc.) Quick and accurate.
  Quotations
  Stephen Ward's crisp finish from Sylvan Ebanks-Blake's pass 11 minutes into the second half proved enough to give Mick McCarthy's men a famous victory.
  2010 December 29, Sam Sheringham, “Liverpool 0 - 1 Wolverhampton”, in BBC‎
6. (of talk, text, etc.) Brief and to the point.
  Quotations
  Another way of writing the last example is 'She brought along her favourite food which is chocolate cake' but this is less concise: colons can give your writing lean, crisp style.
  1999, John Hampton, Lisa Emerson, Writing Guidelines for Postgraduate Science Students, page 130
  It was plain that the loss of Phyllis Mills, goofy though she unquestionably was, had hit him a shrewd wallop, and I presumed that he was coming to me for sympathy and heart balm, which I would have been only too pleased to dish out. 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.
  1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XV, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins
7. (of wine) Having a refreshing amount of acidity; having less acidity than green wine, but more than a flabby one.
8. Lively; sparking; effervescing.
  Quotations
  your neat crisp claret
  c. 1612–1630, John Fletcher, George Chapman, Ben Jonson, Philip Massinger, “The Bloody Brother; or, Rollo. A Tragedy.”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1679, Act IV, scene ii
9. (dated) Curling in stiff curls or ringlets.
10. (obsolete) Curled by the ripple of water.
  Quotations
  You nymphs called Naiads, of the winding brooks […] Leave your crisp channels.
  1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene i]
11. (computing theory) Not using fuzzy logic; based on a binary distinction between true and false.
12. (of fabric) Starched and pressed (ironed).
noun
plural crisps
1. (Britain) A very thin slice of potato that has been deep fried, typically packaged and sold as a snack.
  Quotations
  "Go and get some crisps and pop," he said.
  1971, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 33
  Turn you inside out and lick you like a crisp packet
  2014, “Every Other Freckle”, in This Is All Yours, performed by alt-J
  As I sit in front of the TV angrily eating crisps, it comes to me. I will challenge her to a race.
  2016, Steve Coogan, Neil Gibbons & Rob Gibbons, Alan Partridge: Nomad, page 44
2. (Britain, by extension, colloquial) A crunchy, savoury snack food made from potato starch, cornmeal or other starchy cereal grain, packaged and eaten similarly to the above.
3. A baked dessert made with fruit and crumb topping
4. (Britain, food) Anything baked or fried in thin slices and eaten as a snack.
verb
third-person singular simple present crisps, present participle crisping, simple past and past participle crisped
1. (transitive) To make crisp.
  Quotations
  […] put it into a Dish, with a little stew’d Spinage, crisp’d Bread, and a few forc’d-meat Balls.
  c. 1752, Elizabeth Moxon, English Housewifry, Leeds: James Lister, “To make Hare Soop,” p. 6
  Eliza was fretful at his absences, and brought him his dinner crisped and dried from its long heating in the oven.
  1929, Thomas Wolfe, chapter 17, in Look Homeward, Angel‎, New York: Modern Library, page 230
2. (intransitive) To become crisp.
  Quotations
  […] the air chilled at sunset, the ground crisped, and ere dusk, a hoar frost was insidiously stealing over growing grass and unfolding bud.
  1849, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter 8, in Shirley. A Tale. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder and Co., […]
  The dew is dried that drenched our hideOr washed about our way;And where we drank, the puddled bankIs crisping into clay.
  1895, Rudyard Kipling, “Letting in the Jungle”, in The Second Jungle Book‎, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, page 79
  Her hair feels fake, like a wig, but I think it is just crisping up under the dye and Frizz-Ease.
  2007, Anne Enright, chapter 24, in The Gathering‎, New York: Black Cat, page 154
  […] 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.
  2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, New York: HarperCollins, Part 4, Chapter 2
3. (transitive, dated) To cause to curl or wrinkle (of the leaves or petals of plants, for example); to form into ringlets or tight curls (of hair).
  Quotations
  […] those crisped snaky golden locksWhich make such wanton gambols with the wind,
  c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene ii]
  […] the brimme therof was as it were the brimme of a chalice, or of a crisped lilie:
  1609, Douay-Rheims Bible, 2 Chronicles 4.5
  The Louer with the Myrtle Sprayes / Adornes his crisped Tresses:
  1630, Michael Drayton, The Muses Elizium, London: John Waterson, “The Description of Elizium,” The fift Nimphall, p. 44
  […] the well known rhubarb of our gardens, with roundish crisped leaves.
  1800, Thomas Pennant, “China”, in The View of Hindoostan‎, volume 3, London: Henry Hughs, page 172
  For a time I was made to forget that my skin was dark and my hair crisped.
  1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 23, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York, Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […], part II (Life as a Freeman), page 360
  The mere story of their adventures […] on their road to and from school would have crisped a Western boy’s hair.
  1900 December – 1901 October, Rudyard Kipling, chapter 7, in Kim (Macmillan’s Colonial Library; no. 414), London: Macmillan and Co., published 1901, page 176
4. (intransitive, dated) To become curled.
  Quotations
  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, […]
  1597, John Gerarde [i.e., John Gerard], “Of Lettuce”, in The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. […], London: […] Edm[und] Bollifant, for Bonham and Iohn Norton, book II, page 239
  […] a few shreds of purple bloom on a brown, crisping tuft of self-heal
  1972, Richard Adams, chapter 50, in Watership Down‎, New York: Scribner, published 1996, page 417
5. (transitive, dated) To cause to undulate irregularly (of water); to cause to ripple.
  Quotations
  […] the crisped Brooks,Rowling on Orient Pearl and sands of Gold
  1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, lines 237-238
  I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream / Wherein that image shall for ever dwell;
  1818, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 4, London: John Murray, stanza 53, p. 29
  […] when the breeze crisps the pool, you may see the image of the breakers, and a likeness of the foam.
  1860, John Ruskin, chapter 1, in Modern Painters, volumes V (parts VI–IX), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], § 14, page 204
  […] he saw a flying squall darkening and crisping suddenly the tide.
  1916 December 29, James Joyce, “Chapter 4”, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, page 194
6. (intransitive, dated) To undulate or ripple.
  Quotations
  Hitherto we haue sayled with a fore-wind, & our sliding ship hath plowed vp the crisping waues of the Sea at ease.
  1630, Henry Hawkins (translator), Certaine selected epistles of S. Hierome, Saint-Omer: The English College Press, “The Epitaphe of S. Paula,” p. 96
  To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, / And tender curving lines of creamy spray:
  1832, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters,” Choric Song, V., in Poems, London: Moxon, p. 114
  […] the quick yielding of the waves that crisp and curl and ripple about my body.
  1908, Helen Keller, “The Seeing Hand”, in The World I Live In,‎, New York: The Century Co., page 11
7. (transitive, dated) To wrinkle, contort or tense (a part of one's body).
  Quotations
  […] 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:
  1741, Alexander Pope, chapter 10, in Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus‎, Dublin: George Faulkner, page 82
  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.
  1895, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure‎, New York: Harper, published 1896, Part 4, Chapter 3, p. 266
  […] 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.
  1914, Frank Norris, chapter 15, in Vandover and the Brute‎, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, pages 242–243
  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.
  1915, John Galsworthy, chapter 27, in The Freelands,‎, London: Heinemann, page 252
  They [the shark’s teeth] were shaped like a man’s fingers when they are crisped like claws.
  1952, Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea‎, New York: Scribner
8. (intransitive, dated) To become contorted or tensed (of a part of the body).
  Quotations
  […] she gave no sign of the wave of repugnance that swept over her except that her fingers suddenly crisped.
  1935, Edgar Wallace, Robert G. Curtis, chapter 10, in The Man Who Changed His Name,‎, London: Hutchinson
9. (transitive, intransitive, rare) To interweave (of the branches of trees).
  Quotations
  […] the hot pavement by the playing field where the trees crisp together.
  1938, Lawrence Durrell, The Black Book‎, Open Road Media, published 2012, Book 2
10. (intransitive, dated) To make a sharp or harsh sound.
  Quotations
  […] everything had become so still that the crisping of the snow under foot might be heard nearly half a verst round.
  1860, Nikolai Gogol, “The Night of Christmas Eve: A Legend of Little Russia”, in George Tolstoy, transl., Cossack Tales‎, London: Blackwood, page 1
  […] the wheels [of the carriage] made their little crisping over the fine metal of the driveway.
  1904, Harry Leon Wilson, chapter 10, in The Seeker‎, New York: Doubleday, Page, page 239
  […] her light footsteps and crisping draperies retreated along the passage,
  1915, Clotilde Graves (as Richard Dehan), “A Dish of Macaroni” in Off Sandy Hook, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, p. 39
  The same peculiar crisping or crackling sound […] was heard this morning in every direction […] the ‘noise accompanying the aurora,’
  1915, Elisha Kent Kane, chapter 16, in Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack‎, New York: Outing Publishing Company, published 1916, page 291
  Jericho had placed in my hand a glass in which the bubbles broke with a crisping sound.
  1948 November, Max Brand, “Honor Bright”, in The Cosmopolitan
11. (transitive, dated) To colour (something with highlights); to add small amounts of colour to (something).
  Quotations
  It was the form of a man of middle age, the hair white, but the beard only crisped with grey,
  1876 December, Margaret Oliphant, “The Secret Chamber”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume 120, page 718
  […] Monte Pellegrino, a huge, inordinate mass of pinkish rock, hardly crisped with the faintest vegetation, looming up to heaven from the sea.
  1921, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, “The Sea”, in Sea and Sardinia, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Seltzer, page 55
  The leaves of the chestnut were crisped with gold.
  1925, Warwick Deeping, chapter 7, in Sorrell and Son‎, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, published 1926, page 66

Definition of "crisp"

crisp

adjective

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