crumb

CEFRB1

/kɹʌm/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A very small piece of bread, cake, or another food.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A bit, small amount.

Examples

  • Luis gave the crumb trail a quick rinse.

  • There is a crumb in his beard.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  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. The soft internal portion of bread, surrounded by crust.

More examples

In context

  • The pigeons were happily pecking at crumbs of bread on the ground.

  • a crumb of comfort

  • to crumb bread

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

There was a single bread blank on the clean white tablecloth.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English crome, cromme, crumme, crume, from Old English cruma (“crumb, fragment”), from Proto-Germanic *krumô, *krūmô (“fragment, crumb”), from Proto-Indo-European *grū-mo- (“something scraped together, lumber, junk; to claw, scratch”), from *ger- (“to turn, bend, twist, wind”). The b is unetymological, as in limb, appearing in the mid-15th century to match crumble and words like dumb, numb, thumb. Cognate with Dutch kruim (“crumb”), Low German Krome, Krume (“crumb”), German Krume (“crumb”), Danish krumme (“crumb”), Swedish dialectal krumma (“crumb”), Swedish inkråm (“crumbs, giblets”), Icelandic krumur (“crumb”), Latin grūmus (“a little heap”).