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Cramp   /kræmp/   Listen
noun
Cramp  n.  
1.
That which confines or contracts; a restraint; a shackle; a hindrance. "A narrow fortune is a cramp to a great mind." "Crippling his pleasures with the cramp of fear."
2.
(Masonry) A device, usually of iron bent at the ends, used to hold together blocks of stone, timbers, etc.; a cramp iron.
3.
(Carp.) A rectangular frame, with a tightening screw, used for compressing the joints of framework, etc.
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.
5.
(Med.) A spasmodic and painful involuntary contraction of a muscle or muscles, as of the leg. "The cramp, divers nights, gripeth him in his legs."
6.
(Med.) A paralysis of certain muscles due to excessive use; as, writer's cramp; milker's cramp, etc.
Cramp bone, the patella of a sheep; formerly used as a charm for the cramp. "He could turn cramp bones into chess men."
Cramp ring, a ring formerly supposed to have virtue in averting or curing cramp, as having been consecrated by one of the kings of England on Good Friday.


verb
Cramp  v. t.  (past & past part. cramped; pres. part. cramping)  
1.
To compress; to restrain from free action; to confine and contract; to hinder. "The mind my be as much cramped by too much knowledge as by ignorance."
2.
To fasten or hold with, or as with, a cramp.
3.
Hence, To bind together; to unite. "The... fabric of universal justic is well cramped and bolted together in all its parts."
4.
To form on a cramp; as, to cramp boot legs.
5.
To afflict with cramp. "When the gout cramps my joints."
To cramp the wheels of wagon, to turn the front wheels out of line with the hind wheels, so that one of them shall be against the body of the wagon.


adjective
Cramp  adj.  Knotty; difficult. (R.) "Care being taken not to add any of the cramp reasons for this opinion."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Cramp" Quotes from Famous Books



... insomnia. Bed linen was often embroidered, and set with bits of jacynth, and there is even a record of diamonds having been used in the decoration of sheets! Another entertaining instance of credulity was the use of "cramp rings." These were rings blessed by the queen, and supposed to cure all manner of cramps, just as the king's touch was supposed to cure scrofula. When a queen died, the demand for these rings became a panic: no ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... down, we find abnormal conditions. Some men cramp and constrict themselves. The chest is allowed to collapse and the whole body tends to be drawn together. Grief or any negative emotion of feeling or condition destructive to health tends to ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... young un, I was going in if you hadn't. I shall get my boots ready to kick off now, so don't you be frightened if you get numbed with the cold, or a touch of cramp; just sing out and I will be with ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... he had provided himself to a gendarme; however, he had only a very confused idea of what had happened. He had left Vernon without any breakfast, seized every now and then with hopeless despair and raging pangs which had driven him to munch the leaves of the hedges as he tramped along. A prey to cramp and fright, his body bent, his sight dimmed, and his feet sore, he had continued his weary march, ever drawn onwards in a semi-unconscious state by a vision of Paris, which, far, far away, beyond the horizon, seemed to be summoning him and ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... this is not characteristic of the English people; but "they are well kept that God keeps," and perhaps it would not be wise to cramp the hand of relief too much at a time like this, to a people who have been, and will be yet, the hope and glory of ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh


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