cramp

From Middle English crampe, from Old French crampe, cranpe (“cramp”), from Old Frankish *krampa (“cramp”), from Proto-Germanic *krampō (“cramp, clasp”), from Proto-Indo-European *grem- (“to unite; lap, pile, heap”), from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to unite, collect, forgather”). Cognate with Dutch kramp (“cramp”), German Low German Kramp (“cramp”), German Krampe and Krampf (“cramp”), Swedish kramp (“cramp”), Icelandic krampa (“cramp”). See also Proto-Germanic *kruppaz (“lump, round mass, body, crop”), Ancient Greek ἀγείρω (ageírō, “I gather, collect”), whence ἀγορά (agorá), Latin grex.

• IPA^(key): /kɹæmp/
• Rhymes: -æmp

cramp (countable and uncountable, plural cramps)

1. A painful contraction of a muscle which cannot be controlled.
   • Sir T. More

     The cramp, divers nights, gripeth him in his legs.

2. That which confines or contracts; a restraint; a shackle; a hindrance.
   • L'Estrange

     A narrow fortune is a cramp to a great mind.

   • Cowper

     crippling his pleasures with the cramp of fear

3. A clamp for carpentry or masonry.
4. A piece of wood having a curve corresponding to that of the upper part of the instep, on which the upper leather of a boot is stretched to give it the requisite shape.

cramp (third-person singular simple present cramps, present participle cramping, simple past and past participle cramped)

1. (intransitive) (of a muscle) To contract painfully and uncontrollably.
2. (transitive) To affect with cramps or spasms.
   • 1936, Heinrich Hauser, Once Your Enemy (translated from the German by Norman Gullick)

     The collar of the tunic scratched my neck, the steel helmet made my head ache, and the puttees cramped my leg muscles.

3. (transitive, figuratively) To prohibit movement or expression of.

   You're cramping my style.

   • Layard

     The mind may be as much cramped by too much knowledge as by ignorance.

4. (transitive) To restrain to a specific physical position, as if with a cramp.

   You're going to need to cramp the wheels on this hill.

   • Ford

     when the gout cramps my joints

5. To fasten or hold with, or as if with, a cramp iron.
6. (by extension) To bind together; to unite.
   • Burke

     The […] fabric of universal justice is well cramped and bolted together in all its parts.

7. To form on a cramp.

   to cramp boot legs

cramp (comparative more cramp, superlative most cramp)

1. (archaic) cramped; narrow
   • 1871, David Masson, The Life of John Milton

     […] the result was those folio volumes of MSS. now in the British Museum, in which inquirers into the history of that period find so much interesting material in such a confused state and in such a dreadfully cramp handwriting.

• “cramp” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.

cramp

1. intricate, complex

• neuchramp