Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Firm but easily broken or crumbled; brittle.
  • adjective Pleasingly firm and fresh.
  • adjective Bracing; invigorating.
  • adjective Lively; sprightly.
  • adjective Conspicuously clean or new.
  • adjective Marked by clarity, conciseness, and briskness.
  • adjective Having small curls, waves, or ripples. Used of hair.
  • intransitive verb To make or keep crisp.
  • intransitive verb To become or remain crisp.
  • noun Something crisp or easily crumbled.
  • noun A dessert of fruit baked with a sweet crumbly topping.
  • noun Chiefly British A potato chip.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To curl; twist; contract or form into waves or ringlets, as the hair; wreathe or interweave, as the branches of trees.
  • To wrinkle or curl into little undulations; crimp; ripple; corrugate; pucker: as, to crisp cloth.
  • To form little curls or undulations; curl.
  • To become friable; crackle.
  • Curled; crimpled; crimped; wrinkled; wavy; especially (of the hair), curling in small stiff or firm curls.
  • In botany, curled and twisted: applied to a leaf when the border is much more dilated than the disk.
  • Twisted; twisting; winding.
  • Brittle; friable; breaking or crumbling into fragments of somewhat firm consistence.
  • Possessing a certain degree of firmness and vigor; fresh; having a fresh appearance.
  • Brisk; lively.
  • Having a sharp, pleasantly acrid taste.
  • Lively in expression; pithy; terse; sparkling.
  • In entomology, same as crispate.
  • noun A material formerly used for veils, probably similar to crape; a veil.
  • noun Same as crespine. Planché.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To undulate or ripple. Cf. crisp, v. t.
  • noun That which is crisp or brittle; the state of being crisp or brittle; ; specifically, the rind of roasted pork; crackling.
  • transitive verb To curl; to form into ringlets, as hair, or the nap of cloth; to interweave, as the branches of trees.
  • transitive verb To cause to undulate irregularly, as crape or water; to wrinkle; to cause to ripple. Cf. Crimp.
  • transitive verb To make crisp or brittle, as in cooking.
  • transitive verb an instrument by which hair or any textile fabric is crisped.
  • transitive verb the simplest form of crisping iron.
  • adjective Curling in stiff curls or ringlets.
  • adjective Poetic Curled with the ripple of the water.
  • adjective Brittle; friable; in a condition to break with a short, sharp fracture.
  • adjective Possessing a certain degree of firmness and freshness; in a fresh, unwilted condition.
  • adjective Lively; sparking; effervescing.
  • adjective Brisk; crackling; cheerful; lively.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Sharp, clearly defined.
  • adjective Curling in stiff curls or ringlets; as, crisp hair.
  • adjective Curled with a ripple of water.
  • adjective Brittle; friable; in a condition to break with a short, sharp fracture; as, crisp snow.
  • adjective Possessing a certain degree of firmness and freshness; in a fresh, unwilted condition.
  • adjective Of weather, air etc.: dry and cold.
  • adjective of movement, etc. Quick and accurate.
  • adjective text, etc. Brief and to the point. (Esp. in make it crisp.)
  • adjective Lively; sparking; effervescing.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, curly, from Old English, from Latin crispus; see sker- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English crisp ("curly"), from Old English crisp ("curly"), from Latin crispus ("curly")

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Examples

Comments

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  • Apple crisp, that's crisp.

    June 27, 2007

  • apple crisp - I would say that is yummy, but not crisp

    June 27, 2007

  • Hmm. True, amcd. Either I've not had the right kind of apple crisp or apple crisp really isn't crisp. Still tastes good, though. Yum.

    June 27, 2007

  • As far as I'm concerned, the texture of the apples isn't really the point - it is all about the crunchy, crackly goodness that is the streusel on top. mmmmmmmmmm!

    June 27, 2007

  • Oh dear, I shoulda known better. I wondered why "crisp" was suddenly so hip--why were so many people listing it. The answer was in the Urban Dictionary: evidently it is used to mean awsome, cool, or something like that. So I was trying to make a joke. Best I had stick to my own outdated slanguage.

    June 27, 2007

  • Well, you're not alone. I was thinking of apple crisp all along--nothing more. :-)

    June 27, 2007

  • Looks like the joke's on all the rest of us. (:

    June 28, 2007

  • See crumble

    February 6, 2008

  • 'curled', 'turning' and 'winding' was a meaning of crisp in the 16th century. from the indo-european root sker- turn, bend

    March 28, 2009

  • Onomotopoeia.

    August 4, 2009

  • “A deep-dish fruit dessert made with a crumb or streusel topping and baked.”

    Ochef.com, Cobbler, Crisp, Crumble, Grunt, Slump—You Get the Picture

    April 6, 2010