"creep up" meaning in English

See creep up in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: creeps up [present, singular, third-person], creeping up [participle, present], crept up [participle, past], crept up [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|creep<,,crept> up}} creep up (third-person singular simple present creeps up, present participle creeping up, simple past and past participle crept up)
  1. (intransitive) To advance or increase with stealth, unnoticed (literally or figuratively). Tags: intransitive Translations (to advance with stealth): anschleichen (German)
    Sense id: en-creep_up-en-verb-mqk3gUmM Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English phrasal verbs with particle (up)

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for creep up meaning in English (2.0kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "creeps up",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "creeping up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "crept up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "crept up",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "creep<,,crept> up"
      },
      "expansion": "creep up (third-person singular simple present creeps up, present participle creeping up, simple past and past participle crept up)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English phrasal verbs with particle (up)",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "The lioness has to creep up behind her prey so as not to be noticed.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1982 August 28, Andrea Loewenstein, “Becker's Experience Talks Back”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 7, page 11",
          "text": "Her exploration of emotion, too, is slightly muted. You have to stop and consult yourself. Pain — or joy or passion — creep up afterwards. These poems never hit you over the head.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 September 23, A teacher, “Choosing a primary school: a teacher's guide for parents”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "These days cramped classrooms are all too common, with class sizes creeping up.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To advance or increase with stealth, unnoticed (literally or figuratively)."
      ],
      "id": "en-creep_up-en-verb-mqk3gUmM",
      "links": [
        [
          "advance",
          "advance"
        ],
        [
          "increase",
          "increase"
        ],
        [
          "stealth",
          "stealth"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive) To advance or increase with stealth, unnoticed (literally or figuratively)."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "intransitive"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "to advance with stealth",
          "word": "anschleichen"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "creep up"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "creeps up",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "creeping up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "crept up",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "crept up",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "creep<,,crept> up"
      },
      "expansion": "creep up (third-person singular simple present creeps up, present participle creeping up, simple past and past participle crept up)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English intransitive verbs",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrasal verbs",
        "English phrasal verbs with particle (up)",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "The lioness has to creep up behind her prey so as not to be noticed.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1982 August 28, Andrea Loewenstein, “Becker's Experience Talks Back”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 7, page 11",
          "text": "Her exploration of emotion, too, is slightly muted. You have to stop and consult yourself. Pain — or joy or passion — creep up afterwards. These poems never hit you over the head.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 September 23, A teacher, “Choosing a primary school: a teacher's guide for parents”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "These days cramped classrooms are all too common, with class sizes creeping up.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To advance or increase with stealth, unnoticed (literally or figuratively)."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "advance",
          "advance"
        ],
        [
          "increase",
          "increase"
        ],
        [
          "stealth",
          "stealth"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive) To advance or increase with stealth, unnoticed (literally or figuratively)."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "intransitive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "to advance with stealth",
      "word": "anschleichen"
    }
  ],
  "word": "creep up"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.