crumb

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A tiny piece that breaks off bread, cake, or similar food.

   The pigeons pecked at the crumbs of bread on the ground.

2. 2
   noun

   A very small amount of something.

   He offered them not even a crumb of comfort.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Crumb is an Old English word whose final b was added in the 16th century, partly under the influence of the related crumble and partly by analogy with words such as dumb and thumb. The later adjective crummy was originally spelled crumby and meant “crumbly” or “covered in crumbs” before developing its unfavorable modern senses.

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, giblet…

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