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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



... my body began to ache. I was, of course, rottenly trained, without a sound muscle in my body, and my legs threatened cramp, my heel grated against my boot and sent a stab to my stomach with every movement, my shoulders seemed to pull away from the stretcher as though they would separately rebel against my orders ... and my hand began again to slip. The Feldscher also began to feel the strain. Once he ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... moment's thought, "I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people's opportunities ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... while those who rejected both had private prejudices as to snapping-turtles. The surgeon would have threatened intermittent fever, the first assistant rheumatism, and the second assistant congestive chills; non-swimmers would have predicted exhaustion, and swimmers cramp; and all this before coming within bullet-range of any hospitalities on the other shore. But I knew the folly of most alarms about reptiles and fishes; man's imagination peoples the water with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... down as an axiom among poets that their ethical natures must develop spontaneously, or not at all. An attempt to force one's moral instincts will inevitably cramp and thwart one's art. It is unparalleled to find so great a poet as Coleridge plaintively asserting, "I have endeavored to feel what I ought to feel," [Footnote: Letter to the Reverend George Coleridge, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... such an intense cramp seized him that he could not speak for some time. Then he began again, but in a ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz


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