crest

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crest

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From Middle English creste, from Old French creste (modern French crête) and perhaps continuing Old English cræsta (“crest, tuft, plume”); both ultimately from Vulgar Latin *cresta, from Latin crista. Doublet of crista.

The informal meaning “design, logo” (sense 11) stems from a misinterpretation of the heraldic sense 4, which specifically refers to the object placed on top of the helm.

• IPA^(key): /kɹɛst/
• Rhymes: -ɛst

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

crest (plural crests)

1. The summit of a hill or mountain ridge.
3. A tuft, or other natural ornament, growing on an animal's head, for example the comb of a cockerel, the swelling on the head of a snake, the lengthened feathers of the crown or nape of bird, etc.
5. The plume of feathers, or other decoration, worn on or displayed on a helmet; the distinctive ornament of a helmet.
7. (heraldry) A bearing worn, not upon the shield, but usually on a helmet above it, sometimes (as for clerics) separately above the shield or separately as a mark for plate, in letterheads, and the like.
   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me. I look upon notoriety with the same indifference as on the buttons on a man's shirt-front, or the crest on his note-paper.

8. The upper curve of a horse's neck.
9. The ridge or top of a wave.
10. The helm or head, as typical of a high spirit; pride; courage.
11. The ornamental finishing which surmounts the ridge of a roof, canopy, etc.
12. The top line of a slope or embankment.
13. (anatomy) A ridge along the surface of a bone.
15. (informal) A design or logo, especially one of an institution, sports club, association or high-class family.
    • 2012 April 26, Tasha Robinson, “Film: Reviews: The Pirates! Band Of Misfits :”, in The Onion AV Club‎:

      Hungry for fame and the approval of rare-animal collector Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), Darwin deceives the Captain and his crew into believing they can get enough booty to win the pirate competition by entering Polly in a science fair. So the pirates journey to London in cheerful, blinkered defiance of the Queen, a hotheaded schemer whose royal crest reads simply “I hate pirates.”

16. Any of several birds in the family Regulidae, including the goldcrests and firecrests.

• (skin on head of birds): comb, cockscomb

• (skin on head of birds): caruncle, snood, wattle

crest (third-person singular simple present crests, present participle cresting, simple past and past participle crested)

1. (intransitive) Particularly with reference to waves, to reach a peak.
2. (transitive) To reach the crest of (e.g. a hill or mountain).
   • 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian‎:

     the land rolls gently, so that, upon cresting a low rise or passing a copse of wind turbines, you suddenly spot a lot full of lorries or a complex of gigantic sheds.

3. (transitive) To furnish with, or surmount as, a crest; to serve as a crest for.
   • c. 1606–1607 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     His legs bestrid the ocean, his reared arm / Crested the world.

   • 1815, William Wordsworth, Extracts from An Evening Walk:

     groves of clouds that crest the mountain's brow

4. (transitive) To mark with lines or streaks like waving plumes.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 13:

     Like as the shining skie in summers night, / What time the dayes with scorching heat abound, / Is creasted all with lines of firie light

• rects, CERTs, certs, RTECS

• crescu, acrescu

From Latin crēscō. Compare Romanian crește, cresc.

• IPA^(key):

crest first-singular present indicative (past participle crãscute)

1. to grow

• crãshteri
• crãscut