creep out

English

Etymology

From creep + out (adverb). The past tense creeped out (instead of crept out) was possibly influenced by freaked out.[1]

Pronunciation

  • Audio (US):(file)

Verb

creep out (third-person singular simple present creeps out, present participle creeping out, simple past and past participle creeped out or (nonstandard) crept out)

  1. (informal, transitive) To make (someone) uncomfortable or afraid; to give (someone) the creeps.
    Hyponym: weird out
    That janitor who's always talking about blood creeps me out.

Translations

References

  1. ^ “What's the past tense of 'creep'?”, in Merriam-Webster‎[1], 2024, archived from the original on 20 June 2024:
    We don't know why the phrasal verb creep out always forms its past tense (and past participle) with creeped. The phrasal verb is an extension of a 500-year-old verb meaning […] that is no more likely to form its past tense as creeped than any of the other senses. […] One possible influence is another verb [freak out] that is only a few decades older: […] Could it be that the past tense form of freak out as freaked out made creeped out just sound right somehow? We don't know, but the idea doesn't creep or freak us out at all.

Anagrams

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.