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cramp

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From Middle English crampe, from Old French crampe (“cramp”), from Frankish *krampa (“cramp”), from Proto-West Germanic *krampu, from Proto-Germanic *krampō (“cramp, clasp”). Distant relative of English crop.

• IPA^(key): /kɹæmp/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -æmp

cramp (countable and uncountable, plural cramps)

1. A painful contraction of a muscle which cannot be controlled; (sometimes) a similar pain even without noticeable contraction.

   He retired hurt at 31 due to a leg cramp.

   Hyponyms: charley horse, writer's cramp

   Coordinate term: twinge

   • August 1534, Margaret Roper (or Thomas More in her name), letter to Alice Alington

     the cramp also that divers nights gripeth him in his legs.

2. That which confines or contracts.

   Synonyms: restraint, shackle, hindrance

   • 1692, Roger L’Estrange, “ (please specify the fable number.) (please specify the name of the fable.)”, in Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: […], London: […] R[ichard] Sare, […], →OCLC:

     A narrow Fortune is undoubtedly a Cramp to a great Mind.

   • 1781 (date written), William Cowper, “Truth”, in Poems, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], published 1782, →OCLC, page 96:

     How does it grate upon his thankleſs ear, / 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, figurative) To prohibit movement or expression of.

   You're cramping my style.

   • 1853, Austen Henry Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon:

     But the front of the animal , which was in full , was narrow and cramped , and unequal in dignity to the side

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.

   • 1633, John Ford, Perkin Warbeck:

     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.
   • 1780, Edmund Burke, Principles in Politics:

     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.

• Douglas Harper (2001–2025), “cramp”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
• “cramp”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Likely from English cramp (“painful contraction; difficult to make out”)^[1][2] or Middle Irish cnap (“cramping, contracting”).^[3]

• IPA^(key): /kramp/

cramp m (genitive singular cramp, plural crampyn)

1. plague, pestilence

cramp

1. intricate, complicated