different between crisp vs express

English

Etymology

From Middle English crisp (“curly”), from Old English crisp (“curly”), from Latin crispus (“curly”). Doublet of crêpe.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k??sp/
• Rhymes: -?sp

Adjective

crisp (comparative crisper, superlative crispest)

1. (of something seen or heard) Sharp, clearly defined.

2. Brittle; friable; in a condition to break with a short, sharp fracture.

   • The cakes at tea ate short and crisp.

3. Possessing a certain degree of firmness and freshness.
   • 1820, Leigh Hunt, The Indicator

     It [laurel] has been plucked nine months, and yet looks as hale and as crisp as if it would last ninety years.

4. (of weather, air etc.) Dry and cold.
5. (of movement, action etc.) Quick and accurate.
6. (of talk, text, etc.) Brief and to the point.
   • 1999, John Hampton, Lisa Emerson, Writing Guidelines for Postgraduate Science Students (page 130)

     Another way of writing the last example is 'She brought along her favourite food which is chocolate cake' but this is less concise: colons can give your writing lean, crisp style.
7. (of wine) having a refreshing amount of acidity; having less acidity than green wine, but more than a flabby one.
8. (obsolete) Lively; sparking; effervescing.

   • your neat crisp claret

9. (dated) Curling in stiff curls or ringlets.

10. (obsolete) Curled by the ripple of water.
11. (computing theory) Not using fuzzy logic; based on a binary distinction between true and false.

Derived terms

• crispen
• crisply
• crispness
• crispy
• uncrisp

Related terms

• crispate
• crispated
• crispation

Translations

Noun

crisp (plural crisps)

1. (Britain) A thin slice of fried potato eaten as a snack.
2. A baked dessert made with fruit and crumb topping

   Synonyms: crumble, crunch

3. (food) Anything baked or fried and eaten as a snack

Synonyms

• (thin slice of fried potato, Canada, US): chip, potato chip

Translations

Verb

crisp (third-person singular simple present crisps, present participle crisping, simple past and past participle crisped)

1. (transitive) To make crisp.

   Synonym: crispen

   • c. 1752, Elizabeth Moxon, English Housewifry, Leeds: James Lister, “To make Hare Soop,” p. 6,^[2]

     […] put it into a Dish, with a little stew’d Spinage, crisp’d Bread, and a few forc’d-meat Balls.

   • 1929, Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel, New York: Modern Library, Chapter 17, p. 230,^[3]

     Eliza was fretful at his absences, and brought him his dinner crisped and dried from its long heating in the oven.

2. (intransitive) To become crisp.

   Synonym: crispen

   • 1895, Rudyard Kipling, “Letting in the Jungle” in The Second Jungle Book, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, p. 79,^[4]

     The dew is dried that drenched our hide

     Or washed about our way;

     And where we drank, the puddled bank

     Is crisping into clay.

   • 2007, Anne Enright, The Gathering, New York: Black Cat, Chapter 24, p. 154,^[5]

     Her hair feels fake, like a wig, but I think it is just crisping up under the dye and Frizz-Ease.

   • 2009, Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, New York: HarperCollins, Part 4, Chapter 2,

     […] the flick of the wrist with which one rolls the half-set wafer on to the handle of a wooden spoon and then flips it on to the drying rack to crisp.

3. (transitive, dated) To cause to curl or wrinkle (of the leaves or petals of plants, for example); to form into ringlets or tight curls (of hair).
   • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 2,^[6]

     […] those crisped snaky golden locks

     Which make such wanton gambols with the wind,

   • 1609, Douay-Rheims Bible, 2 Chronicles 4.5,^[7]

     […] the brimme therof was as it were the brimme of a chalice, or of a crisped lilie:

   • 1630, Michael Drayton, The Muses Elizium, London: John Waterson, “The Description of Elizium,” The fift Nimphall, p. 44,^[8]

     The Louer with the Myrtle Sprayes

     Adornes his crisped Tresses:

   • 1800, Thomas Pennant, The View of Hindoostan, London: Henry Hughs, Volume 3, “China,” p. 172,^[9]

     […] the well known rhubarb of our gardens, with roundish crisped leaves.

   • 1901, Rudyard Kipling, Kim, London: Macmillan, Chapter 7, p. 176,^[10]

     The mere story of their adventures […] on their road to and from school would have crisped a Western boy’s hair.

4. (intransitive, dated) To become curled.
   • 1597, John Gerard, The herball or, Generall historie of plantes, London: John Norton, Chapter 34, p. 239,^[11]

     The Sauoie Lettuce hath very large leaues spread vpon the grounde, at the first comming vp broade, cut, or gasht about the edges, crisping or curling lightly this or that way, not vnlike to the leaues of garden Endiue […]

   • 1972, Richard Adams, Watership Down, New York: Scribner, 1996, Chapter 50, p. 417,^[12]

     […] a few shreds of purple bloom on a brown, crisping tuft of self-heal

5. (transitive, dated) To cause to undulate irregularly (of water); to cause to ripple.
   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 4, lines 237-238,^[13]

     […] the crisped Brooks,

     Rowling on Orient Pearl and sands of Gold

   • 1818, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 4, London: John Murray, stanza 53, p. 29,^[14]

     I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream

     Wherein that image shall for ever dwell;

   • 1860, John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Volume 5, London: Smith, Elder, Part 9, Chapter 1, § 14, p. 204,^[15]

     […] when the breeze crisps the pool, you may see the image of the breakers, and a likeness of the foam.

   • 1916, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York: Huebsch, 1921, Chapter 4, p. 194,^[16]

     […] he saw a flying squall darkening and crisping suddenly the tide.

6. (intransitive, dated) To undulate or ripple.
   • 1630, Henry Hawkins (translator), Certaine selected epistles of S. Hierome, Saint-Omer: The English College Press, “The Epitaphe of S. Paula,” p. 96,^[17]

     Hitherto we haue sayled with a fore-wind, & our sliding ship hath plowed vp the crisping waues of the Sea at ease.

   • 1832, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters,” Choric Song, V., in Poems, London: Moxon, p. 114,^[18]

     To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,

     And tender curving lines of creamy spray:

   • 1908, Helen Keller, “The Seeing Hand” in The World I Live In, New York: The Century Co., p. 11,^[19]

     […] the quick yielding of the waves that crisp and curl and ripple about my body.

7. (transitive, dated) To wrinkle, contort or tense (a part of one's body).
   • 1741, Alexander Pope, Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, Dublin: George Faulkner, Chapter 10, p. 82,^[20]

     […] he consider’d what an infinity of Muscles these laughing Rascals threw into a convulsive motion at the same time; whether we regard the spasms of the Diaphragm and all the muscles of respiration, the horrible rictus of the mouth, the distortion of the lower jaw, the crisping of the nose, twinkling of the eyes, or sphaerical convexity of the cheeks, with the tremulous succussion of the whole human body:

   • 1895, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, New York: Harper, 1896, Part 4, Chapter 3, p. 266,^[21]

     Phillotson saw his wife turn and take the note, and the bend of her pretty head as she read it, her lips slightly crisped, to prevent undue expression under fire of so many young eyes.

   • 1914, Frank Norris, Vandover and the Brute, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, Chapter 15, p. 242-243,^[22]

     […] a slow torsion and crisping of all his nerves, beginning at his ankles, spread to every corner of his body till he had to shut his fists and teeth against the blind impulse to leap from his bed screaming.

   • 1915, John Galsworthy, The Freelands, London: Heinemann, Chapter 27, p. 252,^[23]

     Ah, here was a fellow coming! And instinctively he crisped his hands that were buried in his pockets, and ran over to himself his opening words.

   • 1952, Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea, New York: Scribner,^[24]

     They [the shark’s teeth] were shaped like a man’s fingers when they are crisped like claws.

8. (intransitive, dated) To become contorted or tensed (of a part of the body).
   • 1935, Edgar Wallace and Robert G. Curtis, The Man Who Changed His Name, London: Hutchinson, Chapter 10,^[25]

     […] she gave no sign of the wave of repugnance that swept over her except that her fingers suddenly crisped.

9. (transitive, intransitive, rare) To interweave (of the branches of trees).
   • 1938, Lawrence Durrell, The Black Book, Open Road Media, 2012, Book 2,^[26]

     […] the hot pavement by the playing field where the trees crisp together.

10. (intransitive, dated) To make a sharp or harsh sound.

    Synonyms: creak, crunch, crackle, rustle

    • 1860, George Tolstoy (translator), “The Night of Christmas Eve: A Legend of Little Russia” in Cossack Tales by Nikolai Gogol, London: Blackwood, p. 1,^[27]

      […] everything had become so still that the crisping of the snow under foot might be heard nearly half a verst round.

    • 1904, Harry Leon Wilson, The Seeker, New York: Doubleday, Page, Chapter 10, p. 239,^[28]

      […] the wheels [of the carriage] made their little crisping over the fine metal of the driveway.

    • 1915, Clotilde Graves (as Richard Dehan), “A Dish of Macaroni” in Off Sandy Hook, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, p. 39,^[29]

      […] her light footsteps and crisping draperies retreated along the passage,

    • 1915, Elisha Kent Kane, Adrift in the Arctic Ice Pack, New York: Outing Publishing Company, 1916, Chapter 16, p. 291,^[30]

      The same peculiar crisping or crackling sound […] was heard this morning in every direction […] the ‘noise accompanying the aurora,’

    • 1948, Max Brand, “Honor Bright” in The Cosmopolitan, November 1948,^[31]

      Jericho had placed in my hand a glass in which the bubbles broke with a crisping sound.

11. (transitive, dated) To colour (something with highlights); to add small amounts of colour to (something).

    Synonym: tinge

    • 1876, Margaret Oliphant, “The Secret Chamber” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 120, December 1876, p. 718,^[32]

      It was the form of a man of middle age, the hair white, but the beard only crisped with grey,

    • 1921, D. H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, New York: Thomas Seltzer, Chapter 2, p. 55,^[33]

      […] Monte Pellegrino, a huge, inordinate mass of pinkish rock, hardly crisped with the faintest vegetation, looming up to heaven from the sea.

    • 1925, Warwick Deeping, Sorrell and Son, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1926, Chapter 7, p. 66,^[34]

      The leaves of the chestnut were crisped with gold.

Derived terms

Translations

Anagrams

• Crips, crips, scrip

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /?k?sp??s/ IPA^(key): /?k.?sp??s/
• Rhymes: -?s

Etymology 1

From French exprès, from Latin expressus, past participle of exprimere (see Etymology 2, below).

Adjective

express (comparative more express, superlative most express)

1. (not comparable) Moving or operating quickly, as a train not making local stops.
2. (comparable) Specific or precise; directly and distinctly stated; not merely implied.

   I gave him express instructions not to begin until I arrived, but he ignored me.

   This book cannot be copied without the express permission of the publisher.

3. Truly depicted; exactly resembling.

   In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and divided countenance.
4. (postpositive, retail) Providing a more limited but presumably faster service than a full or complete dealer of the same kind or type.

   The Pizza Hut inside Target isn't a full one: it's a Pizza Hut Express.

   Some Wal-Mart stores will include a McDonald's Express.

   The mall's selection of cell phone carriers includes a full AT&T store and a T-Mobile express.

Synonyms

• (of a train): fast, crack
• (directly and distinctly stated; not merely implied): explicit, plain; see also Thesaurus:explicit

Antonyms

• (directly and distinctly stated; not merely implied): implied

Translations

Noun

express (plural expresses)

1. A mode of transportation, often a train, that travels quickly or directly.
2. A service that allows mail or money to be sent rapidly from one destination to another.
3. An express rifle.
   • 1885, H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

     "Give me my express," I said, laying down the Winchester, and he handed it to me cocked.

4. (obsolete) A clear image or representation; an expression; a plain declaration.
   • a. 1667, Jeremy Taylor, Clerus Domini, or, A discourse of the divine institution, necessity, sacredness, and separation of the office ministerial together with the nature and manner of its power and operation

     the only remanent express of Christ's sacrifice on earth

5. A messenger sent on a special errand; a courier.
6. An express office.
   • 1873, Edward Everett Hale, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

     She charged him […] to ask at the express if anything came up from town.

7. That which is sent by an express messenger or message.

Synonyms

• (of a train): fast train

Antonyms

• (of a train): local, stopper

Translations

Etymology 2

From Old French espresser, expresser, from frequentative form of Latin exprimere.

Verb

express (third-person singular simple present expresses, present participle expressing, simple past and past participle expressed)

2. (transitive) To convey or communicate; to make known or explicit.

3. (transitive) To press, squeeze out (especially said of milk).
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, chapter 13

     The people of his island of Rokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water of young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl [...].

   • 2018, Kelsey Munroe, The Guardian, 15 March:

     They don’t have teats, so the mothers express their milk onto their bellies for their young to feed.

4. (biochemistry) To translate messenger RNA into protein.
5. (biochemistry) To transcribe deoxyribonucleic acid into messenger RNA.
   • 2015, Ferris Jabr, How Humans Ended Up With Freakishly Huge Brains, Wired:

     When a cell “expresses” a gene, it translates the DNA first into a signature messenger RNA (mRNA) sequence and subsequently into a chain of amino acids that forms a protein.

Synonyms

• outspeak, utter

Derived terms

• expressed
• expressedly
• express oneself

Related terms

• expressible
• expressibly
• expression
• expressive
• expressively
• expressly

Translations

Noun

express (plural expresses)

1. (obsolete) The action of conveying some idea using words or actions; communication, expression.
   • 1646, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, V.20:

     Whereby they discoursed in silence, and were intuitively understood from the theory of their expresses.

2. (obsolete) A specific statement or instruction.
   • 1646, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, II.5:

     This Gentleman [...] caused a man to go down no less than a hundred fathom, with express to take notice whether it were hard or soft in the place where it groweth.

French

Etymology

Borrowed from English express, from Old French expres, from Latin expressus

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?k.sp??s/
• Homophone: expresse

Adjective

express (invariable)

1. express, rapide

Derived terms

Noun

express m (plural express)

1. express train or service