\Creep\ (kr[=e]p), v. t. [imp. {Crept} (kr[e^]pt) ({Crope}
(kr[=o]p), Obs.); p. p. {Crept}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Creeping}.]
[OE. crepen, creopen, AS. cre['o]pan; akin to D. kruipen, G.
kriechen, Icel. krjupa, Sw. krypa, Dan. krybe. Cf. {Cripple},
{Crouch}.]
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.'' --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.

\Creep\, n.
1. The act or process of creeping.
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.