What does "crumb" mean?

crumb — meaning, definition & examples

Definition

n. a tiny piece of something, like a small piece of bread or a tiny bit of information. You use this word when you want to describe something very small or a little bit of something.

n. a small particle or fragment of something, such as a piece of bread or a tiny amount of information. Often used in the phrase 'not a crumb' to emphasize that nothing remains.

simple

“I found a tiny crumb of bread on the floor.”

contextual

“The detective found a single crumb of evidence that helped him solve the case.”

complex

“After the long and exhausting search, the researchers were left with nothing but a single crumb of data to support their initial hypothesis.”

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”).

Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

VERB

crumble(B2)

NOUN

crumb(B1)