What does cribbed mean?
"Cribbed" is the past tense of the verb "crib," most commonly meaning to copy work, writing, or ideas from another source without honest acknowledgment — in short, to plagiarize. A student who has cribbed answers on an exam has cheated by sneaking in outside material, while an author whose prose has been cribbed from elsewhere has had it lifted or imitated. The word carries a distinctly negative connotation of dishonesty and laziness, making it sharper than neutral terms like "borrowed." A second, more literary sense means confined or hemmed in, famously used by Tennyson in describing life 'cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd.' The word's origins are humble: "crib" first denoted a manger or stall for animals, later a small hut or dwelling, then a cheat sheet carried in one's pocket. Today "cribbed" appears most often in discussions of academic integrity and originality, serving as a vivid, slightly informal way to accuse a piece of work of being secondhand rather than genuinely created.
verb (past tense and past participle of "crib")Copied work or ideas dishonestly from another source, or confined or restricted something within a narrow space. As an adjective, it describes something copied or cramped.
- To copy work, text, or answers dishonestly from another person or source.
- To confine or restrict someone or something in a small space (often used figuratively: "cribbed and cabin'd").
- (Adjectival use) Copied or borrowed, especially without acknowledgment.
"He cribbed the entire essay from a website and barely changed a word."
"She cribbed her opening paragraph almost verbatim from a famous novel, and the editor caught it immediately."
"Tennyson's Ulysses laments a life 'cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd' within himself."
The word for cheating on your homework started out as a feeding trough for animals — "crib" originally meant a manger, like the one in the Nativity story.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cribbed
"Crib" traces back to Old English "cribb," meaning a manger or feeding trough for animals, a word of Germanic origin. From the idea of an enclosed animal stall came the senses of a small confined dwelling and, by extension, confinement itself — hence Shakespeare's phrase "cribbed, cabined, and confined" in Macbeth. By the early nineteenth century, student slang had extended "crib" to mean a cheat sheet or purloined translation, giving rise to the modern sense of copying dishonestly. The gambling card game cribbage, invented in the seventeenth century, derives its name from an unrelated but similarly old sense of "crib" as a discard pile.
Related word forms
How cribbed is actually used
In academic contexts, calling work "cribbed" carries a strong connotation of plagiarism and dishonesty. The sense of physical confinement is literary and somewhat archaic, best known through Tennyson's line. In some regional dialects, particularly in parts of Britain, "crib" can also mean to grumble or complain, though this usage is now rare.
Easily confused with cribbed
"Scribed" means wrote or inscribed something, while "cribbed" means copied it dishonestly or confined it.