crimp

adj

1. (obsolete)Easily crumbled; friable; brittle.

   “Now the Fowler […] Treads the crimp Earth,”

2. (obsolete)Weak; inconsistent; contradictory.

   “The evidence is crimp; the witnesses swear backward and forward, and contradict themselves”

noun

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. (plural-normally)Hair that is shaped so it bends back and forth in many short kinks.
4. (obsolete)A card game.

   “Lady Loadstone: Laugh, and keep company, at gleek or crimp. / Mistress Polish: Your ladyship says right, crimp sure will cure her.”

5. A small hold with little surface area.
6. A grip on such a hold.
7. An agent who procures seamen, soldiers, etc., especially by decoying, entrapping, impressing, or seducing them.

   “Indeed, when a maſter of a ſhip, ſuppoſe at Jamaica, hath loſt any of his hands, he applies of courſe to a crimp[…]who makes it his buſineſs to ſeduce the men belonging to ſome other ſhip,”

   “Walking the street very hungry, and not knowing what to do with himself, a crimp's bill was put into his hand, offering immediate entertainment and encouragement to such as would bind themselves to serve in America. He went directly, sign'd the indentures, was put into the ship, and came over, never writing a line to acquaint his friends what was become of him.”

   “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.”

   “Jack and Metsy at Portsmouth, fitting out the vessel, and offering three guineas ahead to the crimps for every good able seaman”

   “I hear there are plenty of good men stowed away by the crimps at different places.”

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

verb

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

   “Cornish pasties are crimped during preparation.”

   “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.
7. to hold using a crimp
8. (transitive)To impress (seamen or soldiers); to entrap, to decoy.

   “[…]nay, where in any corner he can spy a tall man, clutching at him, to crimp him or impress him.”

   “To the Reverend Fathers, it seemed that Denis would make an excellent Jesuit; wherefore they set about coaxing and courting, with intent to crimp him.”

   “It appears that that officer, instead of attending to interesting events likely to occur in this quarter, is desirous of plundering corn and crimping recruits”

   “—why not create customers in the Queen's dominions for our own manufacturing produce, instead of trying at enormous expense to crimp them in other countries?”

   “Voltaire is never so good as when he is ridiculing the cruel folly which crimps a number of ignorant and innocent peasants, dresses them up in uniform, teaches them to march and wheel, and sends them off to kill and be killed.”