creeping
 爬行(a.)爬行的


 Creep v. t. [imp. Crept (Crope Obs.); p. p. Crept; p. pr. & vb. n. Creeping.]
 1. To move along the ground, or on any other surface, on the belly, as a worm or reptile; to move as a child on the hands and knees; to crawl.
 Ye that walk
 The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep.   --Milton.
 2. To move slowly, feebly, or timorously, as from unwillingness, fear, or weakness.
 The whining schoolboy . . . creeping, like snail,
 Unwillingly to school.   --Shak.
    Like a guilty thing, I creep.   --Tennyson.
 3. To move in a stealthy or secret manner; to move imperceptibly or clandestinely; to steal in; to insinuate itself or one's self; as, age creeps upon us.
    The sophistry which creeps into most of the books of argument.   --Locke.
    Of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women.   --2. Tim. iii. 6.
 4. To slip, or to become slightly displaced; as, the collodion on a negative, or a coat of varnish, may creep in drying; the quicksilver on a mirror may creep.
 5. To move or behave with servility or exaggerated humility; to fawn; as, a creeping sycophant.
    To come as humbly as they used to creep.   --Shak.
 6. To grow, as a vine, clinging to the ground or to some other support by means of roots or rootlets, or by tendrils, along its length. “Creeping vines.”
 7. To have a sensation as of insects creeping on the skin of the body; to crawl; as, the sight made my flesh creep. See Crawl, v. i., 4.
 8. To drag in deep water with creepers, as for recovering a submarine cable.


 Creep·ing, a.
 1. Crawling, or moving close to the ground. “Every creeping thing.”
 2. Growing along, and clinging to, the ground, or to a wall, etc., by means of rootlets or tendrils.
    Casements lined with creeping herbs.   --Cowper.
 Ceeping crowfoot Bot., a plant, the Ranunculus repens.
 Creeping snowberry, an American plant (Chiogenes hispidula) with white berries and very small round leaves having the flavor of wintergreen.

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 creeping
      n : a slow creeping mode of locomotion (on hands and knees or
          dragging the body); "a crawl was all that the injured man
          could manage"; "the traffic moved at a creep" [syn: crawl,
           crawling, creep]