Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A group of people working together; a gang: a crew of stagehands.
- n. A group of people gathered together temporarily; a crowd.
- n. All personnel operating or serving aboard a ship.
- n. All of a ship's personnel except the officers.
- n. All personnel operating or serving aboard an aircraft in flight.
- n. Sports A team of rowers, as of a racing shell.
- n. Sports The sport of rowing.
- v. To serve as a member of a crew: crewed on a sloop.
- v. To serve as a crew member on: The space station will be crewed by a team of eight people.
- v. Chiefly British A past tense of crow2.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An accession; a reinforcement; a company of soldiers or others sent as a reinforcement, or on an expedition. See accrue, n.
- n. Any company of people; an assemblage; a crowd: nearly always in a derogatory or a humorous sense.
- n. Nautical: The company of seamen who man a ship, vessel, or boat; the seamen belonging to a vessel; specifically, the common sailors of a ship's company. In a broad (but not properly nautical) sense the word comprises all the officers and men on board a ship, enrolled on the books. It has received this interpretation in law.
- n. The company or gang of a ship's carpenter, gunner, boatswain, etc.
- n. Any company or gang of laborers engaged upon a particular work, as the company of men (engineer, fireman, conductor, brakemen, etc.) who manage and run a railroad-train.
- n. Synonyms Band, party, herd, mob, horde, throng.
- n. An archaic preterit of crow.
Wiktionary
- n. UK, dialectal A pen for livestock such as chickens or pigs
- v. UK Simple past tense and past participle of crow. To have made the characteristic sound of a rooster.
- n. A group of people (often staff) manning and operating a large facility or piece of equipment such as a factory, ship, boat, or airplane
- n. plural: crew A member of the crew of a vessel or plant
- n. nautical, plural: crew A member of a ship's company who is not an officer
- n. art The group of workers on a dramatic production who are not part of the cast
- n. art, plural: crew A worker on a dramatic production who is not part of the cast
- n. A group of people working together on a task
- n. informal, often derogatory A close group of friends
- n. often derogatory A set of individuals lumped together by the speaker
- n. slang, hip-hop A hip-hop group
- n. sports, rowing, uncountable The sport of competitive rowing.
- n. rowing A rowing team manning a single shell.
- v. transitive and intransitive To be a member of a vessel's crew
- v. To be a member of a work or production crew
- v. To supply workers or sailors for a crew
- v. nautical To do the proper work of a sailor
- v. nautical To take on, recruit (new) crew
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Zoöl.) The Manx shearwater.
- n. A company of people associated together; an assemblage; a throng.
- n. The company of seamen who man a ship, vessel, or at; the company belonging to a vessel or a boat.
- n. In an extended sense, any small body of men associated for a purpose; a gang.
- imp. of crow
WordNet 3.0
- n. an informal body of friends
- n. the men and women who man a vehicle (ship, aircraft, etc.)
- v. serve as a crew member on
- n. the team of men manning a racing shell
- n. an organized group of workmen
Etymologies
- from Middle English, from Old French creue ("an increase, recruit, military reinforcement"), the feminine past participle of creistre ("grow"), from Latin crescere ("to arise, grow") (Wiktionary)
- Middle English creue, military reinforcement, from Old French, increase, from feminine past participle of creistre, to grow, from Latin crēscere. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Cause it just so happens that Unite, the union of British Airways cabin crew, is on strike, meaning all flights between Glasgow and London are canceled.”
Adventures of a Couch-Hopping Scribbler Part 1: Chicago or Bust
“When you watch, notice that the pilots are all men, and the cabin crew is all female.”
“Working the chain crew is a way to keep a hand in the game," says Garner, a retired teacher from Oceanside, Calif.”
“The camera crew is always active, following each survivor throughout the day and night.”
“Now this crew is the True Activist Court and Bush stacked it well in Roberts – a young guy we'll have to tolerate for some long time, unless we get lucky and fate intervenes!”
Justice Sotomayor issues high court's first ruling of the term
“And this: The danger facing the crew is a "linguistic virus" that spreads by forcing its victims to utter a certain contagious phrase that kills the listener in a gruesome way.”
“While this crew is there you land (using private, international, and EELV's), more power systems (five-seven total) to provide 1 megawatt of power.”
“Mike: My husband and I just visited Bora Bora with a great group of friends --- the crew is there now working on the set.”
Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn Reteam for Couples Retreat | /Film
“The security and stability of my crew is the most important thing to me as a PI.”
“Although John Bandicut comes from Earth, his crew is about as colorful and alien as they come: there's Ik, a Hraachee'an; Li-Jared, a Karellian; Antares, a female empath from Thespi; two robots named Copernicus and Napolean; and a symbiote quarx named Charlie/Charlene that is integrated into Bandicut's mind.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘crew’.
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grade 3
ability, absorb, act, tive, actual, adopt, advantage, ambition, ancient, arrange, arctic, attitude and 125 more...
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Groups
Words synonymous with 'group.'
congregation, crowd, gaggle, flock, clique, bunch, cluster, herd, mass, mob, multitude, organization and 118 more...
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Ayumi G3
Ability, absorb, accuse, act, active, actual, adopt, advantage, advice, ambition, ancient, approach and 128 more...
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LIT - Odyssey - key words and phrases
Key words of the Odyssey by Homer in English including all those famous repeating epitethons like
"bright-eyed Athene"
"wine-dark sea"
"rosy-fingered dawn"
"long suf...yearling, wild celery, Wain, Themis, talon, slither, sedge, sea eagle, scurf, rile, prevaricate, poplar tree and 732 more...
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Off label definitions
Commonly used words with multiple meanings, the others being obscure or rarely used. Good to know for that dang analogy exam.
marquise, navette, indorse, crew, defile, poop, straiten, heckle, frit, notate, oblate, hotspur and 16 more...
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Word List Level RED 1-40
Ability, absorb, accuse, act, active, actual, adopt, advantage, advice, ambition, ancient, approach and 28 more...
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Word List Level RED 1-40
absorb, accuse, act, active, actual, adopt, advantage, advince, ambition, ancient, approach, arrange and 28 more...
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bad guys
black hat, thug, thugz, highwayman, brigand, pirate, corsair, raider, viking, visigoth, vandal, gangster and 46 more...
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transportation
change, car, vehicle, cart, baggage, waiting room, ticket, bicycle, life jacket, railway, shared taxi, ferry and 27 more...
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Word List - Level Red 1-40
Ability, absorb, accuse, act, active, actual, adopt, advantage, advice, ambition, ancient, approach and 28 more...
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Grade 3
Ability, absorb, ability, accuse, act, active, actual, adopt, advantage, advice, ambition, ancient and 26 more...
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Congregation
Clusters, gatherings, and groups of humans.
alliance, circle, council, federation, fraternity, league, assembly, company, group, flock, crowd, mob and 99 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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Gems from 1811 Dictionary of the Vulg...
Citation: 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, unabridged from the original 1811 edition, with a foreword by Max Harris. London: Bibliophile Books, 1984.
Original title page: A Dictio...tuzzy-muzzy, half seas over, hugger mugger, hugotontheonbiqui..., doodle sack, juniper lecture, kate, kent street eject..., jack ketch, davy, abel-wackets, three-legged mare and 370 more...
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English
rewarding, wit, landmark, core, soar, drop, plunge, plummet, dive, level off, rocket, peak and 110 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
a, abandon, ability, able, abortion, about, above, abroad, absence, absolute, absolutely, absorb and 4334 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for crew.

sionnach A knot or gang, also a boat or ship's company. The canting crew are thus divided into twenty-three orders:
MEN:
1. rufflers
2. upright man/men
3. hookers or anglers
4. rogues
5. wild rogues
6. priggers or prancers
7. palliardes
8. fraters
9. jarkman/men or patricoes
10. fresh water mariners or whip jackets
11. drummerers
12. drunken tinkers
13. swadders or pedlars
14. abrams
WOMEN
1. demanders for glimmer or fire
2. bawdy baskets
3. morts
4. autem morts
5. walking morts
6. doxy/doxies
7. delles
8. kinching morts
9. kinching coes Jul 17, 2009
dontcry He was clean off the porch! Jul 15, 2009
yarb Yeats was off his rocker, wasn't he. Jul 15, 2009
madmouth " 'A cockerel
Crew from a blossoming apple bough
Three hundred years before the Fall,
And never crew again till now,
And would not now but that he thought,
Chance being at one with Choice at last,
All that the brigand apple brought
And this foul world were dead at last.
..."
-Yeats, Solomon and the Witch Jul 15, 2009