Meaning & use
crim
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Meaning
nouncountableinformalslangBritishAustralian
A casual word for a person who has committed crimes, especially one who has been caught or has a record.
Grammar: Countable: a crim, some crims; it is clipped from criminal.
Patterns
- a hardened crim
The shopkeeper chased the crim down the street.
He is no master crim, just a petty thief.
The police were looking for the crims who stole the van.
Word forms
| plural | crims |
|---|
Common combinations
- petty crim
- He was only a petty crim who stole bikes.
- career crim
- The detective had arrested the same career crim several times.
- hardened crim
- The prison held many hardened crims.
- local crim
- A local crim was caught breaking into cars.
- known crim
- Officers recognized the man as a known crim.
Synonyms and how they differ
- criminal
- Criminal is the standard, neutral word, while crim is a casual clipped form for spoken use.
- crook
- Crook is another informal word but suggests dishonest dealing, like fraud, more than crim does.
- offender
- Offender is a formal and official word used by police and courts.
- villain
- Villain suggests a wicked person in a story, while crim is a plain everyday label.
Word family
- crime noun
- an act that breaks the law
- criminal noun
- a person who has committed a crime
- criminal adjective
- relating to crime
- criminality noun
- criminal behavior in general
- criminology noun
- the study of crime
Commonly confused: crim or crimp?
crim vs crimp
Crimp means to press something into small folds, and it has no link to crime.
Practice
Which word is a casual, shortened form of criminal used in British and Australian English?
Choose one answer.
Crim is the clipped informal form of criminal. Crook is a different slang word, and crime is the offense rather than the person.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “crim”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.