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.'' --Dryden.
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.
2. A distressing sensation, or sound, like that occasioned by
the creeping of insects.
A creep of undefinable horror. --Blackwood's
Mag.
Out of the stillness, with gathering creep, Like
rising wind in leaves. --Lowell.
3. (Mining) A slow rising of the floor of a gallery,
occasioned by the pressure of incumbent strata upon the
pillars or sides; a gradual movement of mining ground.