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crest

nounverbattested in dialogue

  • //kɹɛst//

The summit of a hill or mountain ridge.

noun

  1. 1

    The summit of a hill or mountain ridge.

  2. 2

    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.

  3. 3

    The plume of feathers, or other decoration, worn on or displayed on a helmet; the distinctive ornament of a helmet.

  4. 4

    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.

    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.

  5. 5

    The upper curve of a horse's neck.

  6. 6

    The ridge or top of a wave.

    Then, too, the same flutter is observed when it glides over the crest of a wave, but this probably only occurs when the wind lies in a certain direction from the axis of flight.

  7. 7

    The helm or head, as typical of a high spirit; pride; courage.

  8. 8

    The ornamental finishing which surmounts the ridge of a roof, canopy, etc.

  9. 9

    The top line of a slope or embankment.

  10. 10

    A ridge along the surface of a bone.

  11. 11

    informalA design or logo, especially one of an institution, sports club, association or high-class family.

    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.”

  12. 12

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

Etymology

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” (noun sense 11) stems from a misinterpretation of the heraldic noun sense 4, which specifically refers to the object placed on top of the helm.

verb

  1. 1

    Particularly with reference to waves, to reach a peak.

  2. 2

    To reach the crest of (e.g. a hill or mountain).

    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. 3

    To furnish with, or surmount as, a crest; to serve as a crest for.

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

    groves of clouds that crest the mountain's brow

  4. 4

    To mark with lines or streaks like waving plumes.

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

Forms

plural
crests
past tense
crested
past participle
crested
present participle
cresting
third person singular
crests
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).