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crumb

Pronunciation: /kɹʌm/

The English word “crumb” has 9 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A small piece which breaks off from baked food (such as cake, biscuit or bread).
  2. A small piece of any other solid substance.
  3. A bit, small amount.
  4. The soft internal portion of bread, surrounded by crust.
  5. A mixture of sugar, cocoa and milk, used to make industrial chocolate.
  6. A nobody; a worthless person.
  7. A body louse (Pediculus humanus).

verb

  1. To cover with crumbs.
  2. To break into crumbs or small pieces with the fingers; to crumble.

Etymology

From Middle English crome, cromme, crumme, crume, from Old English cruma (“crumb, fragment”), from Proto-Germanic *krumô, *krūmô (“fragment, crumb”). The b is unetymological, as in limb, and first appeared in the mid-15th century, influenced by crumble and words such as dumb, numb, and thumb. Cognate with Dutch kruim (“crumb”), Low German Krome, Krume (“crumb”), German Krume (“crumb”), Danish…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.