crew

See also: Crew

English

Pronunciation
  • enPR: kroo͞, IPA(key): /kɹuː/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -uː
  • Homophones: crewe, Crewe, cru

Etymology 1

From Middle English, from Old French creue (“an increase, recruit, military reinforcement”), the feminine past participle of creistre (“grow”), from Latin crescere (“to arise, grow”).

Noun

crew (plural crews)

  1. A group of people together
    1. (obsolete) Any company of people; an assemblage; a throng.
      • (Can we date this quote?) Edmund Spenser
        There a noble crew / Of lords and ladies stood on every side.
      • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton
        Faithful to whom? to thy rebellious crew?
    2. A group of people (often staff) manning and operating a large facility or piece of equipment such as a factory, ship, boat, airplane, or spacecraft.
      If you need help, please contact a member of the crew.
      The crews of the two ships got into a fight.
    3. A group of people working together on a task.
      The crews competed to cut the most timber.
    4. (art) The group of workers on a dramatic production who are not part of the cast.
      There are a lot of carpenters in the crew!
      The crews for different movies would all come down to the bar at night.
    5. (informal, often derogatory) A close group of friends.
      I'd look out for that whole crew down at Jack's.
    6. (often derogatory) A set of individuals lumped together by the speaker.
      • 1861 William Weston Patton, (version of) John Brown's Body
        He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
        And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru;
        They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew,
        But his soul is marching on.
      • 1950, Bernard Nicholas Schilling, Conservative England and the Case Against Voltaire‎, page 266:
        Malignant principles bear fruit in kind and the Revolution did no more than practice what men had been taught by the abandoned crew of philosophers.
    7. (Scouting) A group of Rovers.
    8. (slang, hip-hop) A hip-hop group
      • 2003, Jennifer Guglielmo & Salvatore Salerno, Are Italians White?‎, →ISBN, page 150:
        We decided we needed another rapper in the crew and spent months looking.
    9. (rowing) A rowing team manning a single shell.
      • 1888, W.B. Woodgate, Boating‎, page 71:
        If a crew feather much under water, it is a good plan to seat them in a row on a bench, and give each man a stick to handle as an oar.
  2. A person in a crew
    1. (plural: crew) A member of the crew of a vessel or plant.
      One crew died in the accident.
    2. (art, plural: crew) A worker on a dramatic production who is not part of the cast.
      There were three actors and six crew on the set.
    3. (nautical, plural: crew) A member of a ship's company who is not an officer.
      The officers and crew assembled on the deck.
      There are quarters for three officers and five crew.
  3. (sports, rowing, US, uncountable) The sport of competitive rowing.
    • 1973, University of Virginia Undergraduate Record
      The University of Virginia belongs to the Atlantic Coast Conference and competes interscholastically in basketball, baseball, crew, cross country, fencing, football, golf, indoor track, lacrosse, polo, soccer, swimming, tennis, track, and wrestling.
    • 1989, Benjamin Spock & Mary Morgan, Spock on Spock‎, →ISBN, page 71:
      Two Andover classmates, Al Wilson and Al Lindley, both went out for crew in our freshman year at Yale.
Synonyms
Derived terms
Derived terms
Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb

crew (third-person singular simple present crews, present participle crewing, simple past and past participle crewed)

  1. (transitive and intransitive) To be a member of a vessel's crew
    We crewed together on a fishing boat last year.
    The ship was crewed by fifty sailors.
  2. To be a member of a work or production crew
    The film was crewed and directed by students.
  3. To supply workers or sailors for a crew
    • 2003, Kirk C. Jenkins, The Battle Rages Higher‎, →ISBN, page 42:
      Steele crewed the boat with men from his own regiment and volunteers from John Wood's detachment.
  4. (nautical) To do the proper work of a sailor
    The crewing of the vessel before the crash was deficient.
  5. (nautical) To take on, recruit (new) crew
    • 1967, January, Tampa‎, page 30:
      The two ships will be crewing in the latter half of September.
Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 2

Verb

crew

  1. (Britain, archaic) simple past tense of crow To have made the characteristic sound of a rooster.
    It was still dark when the cock crew.

Etymology 3

Probably of Brythonic origin.

Noun

crew (plural crews)

  1. (Britain, dialectal) A pen for livestock such as chickens or pigs
    • 2004, Gillian Cross, On the Edge‎, →ISBN, page 7:
      Between the shippon and the pig-crew, with the wind blowing over from the vegetable ground.

Etymology 4

Noun

crew (plural crews)

  1. The Manx shearwater.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for crew in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

  • Crew of a spaceship
  • Crew of a rowing shell
  • Crew working on a race car
  • A hip-hop crew

See also

Spanish

Noun

crew m (plural crews)

  1. crew
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