• IPA: /kɹɪmp/

crimp

1. (obsolete) Easily crumbled; friable; brittle.
2. (obsolete) Weak; inconsistent; contradictory.

crimp (plural crimps)

1. A fastener or a fastening method that secures parts by bending metal around a joint and squeezing it together, often with a tool that adds indentations to capture the parts.

   The strap was held together by a simple metal crimp.

2. The natural curliness of wool fibres.
3. (usually, in the plural) Hair that is shaped so it bends back and forth in many short kinks.
4. (obsolete) A card game.

• Russian: обжи́м

crimp (crimps, present participle crimping; past and past participle crimped)

1. To press into small ridges or folds, to pleat, to corrugate.

   Cornish pasties are crimped during preparation.

   • 1983, The Pacific Reporter (page 636)

     Casino employees and Gaming Control Board agents placed the table under observation. The deck in play was exchanged for a new deck, and the used deck was found to contain many crimped cards.

2. To fasten by bending metal so that it squeezes around the parts to be fastened.

   He crimped the wire in place.

3. To pinch and hold; to seize.
4. To style hair into a crimp, to form hair into tight curls, to make it kinky.
5. To bend or mold leather into shape.
6. To gash the flesh, e.g. of a raw fish, to make it crisper when cooked.

• French: sertir
• German: falzen
• Russian: обжима́ть

crimp (plural crimps)

1. An agent who procures seamen, soldier#Noun|soldier, etc., especially by decoy#Verb|decoying, entrapping, impressing, or seducing them.
   • 1796, J[ohn] G[abriel] Stedman, chapter XVII, in Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild Coast of South America; […], volume II, London: J[oseph] Johnson, […], and J. Edwards, […], OCLC 13966308 ↗, page 28 ↗:

     Among his men I recollected one Cordus, a gentleman's ſon from Hamburgh, in which character I had known him, and who had been trepanned into the Weſt India Company's ſervice by the crimps or ſilver-coopers as a common ſoldier.

2. (specifically, legal) One who infringes sub-section 1 of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, applied to a person other than the owner, master, etc., who engages seamen without a license from the Board of Trade.
3. (obsolete) A keeper of a low lodging house where sailors and emigrants are entrapped and fleeced.

crimp (crimps, present participle crimping; past and past participle crimped)

1. (transitive) To impress (seamen or soldiers); to entrap, to decoy.