Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A word game in which a player or team must find and express a rhyme for a word or line presented by the opposing player or team.
  • noun Doggerel.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To rime as in the game of crambo.
  • noun A game in which one person or side has to find a rime to a word which is given by another, or to form a couplet by matching with a line another line already given, the new line being composed of words not used in the other.
  • noun A word which rimes with another.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A game in which one person gives a word, to which another finds a rhyme.
  • noun A word rhyming with another word.
  • noun a game in which one party of players give a word which rhymes with another, which last to be guessed by the opposing party, who represent in dumb show what they think it to be.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A guessing game in which players guess words that rhyme with a clue word, seeking a word that is kept secret or concealed.
  • noun A word rhyming with another word.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Obsolete crambe, cabbage, from Latin crambē (repetīta), (warmed-over) cabbage, said of pedestrian writing, from Greek krambē.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Compare cramp ("difficult") (adjective).

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Examples

  • From the day when Dorris Kincaid had come over with the gray glass vase and her repeated thanks, when the flowers had done their ministry and faded, there had been little simple courtesies, each way, between the opposite houses; and once Kenneth and his sister had taken tea with the Ripwinkleys, and they had played "crambo" and "consequences" in the evening.

    Real Folks 1865

  • She thought of her work, the skewed meter of putty and junk, the crambo clink, she thought of rust rot and wadded cotton batting.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • She thought of her work, the skewed meter of putty and junk, the crambo clink, she thought of rust rot and wadded cotton batting.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • She thought of her work, the skewed meter of putty and junk, the crambo clink, she thought of rust rot and wadded cotton batting.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • What will I not give to have Gargantua see us while we are in this maggotty crambo-vein!

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • What will I not give to have Gargantua see us while we are in this maggotty crambo-vein!

    Five books of the lives, heroic deeds and sayings of Gargantua and his son Pantagruel 2002

  • We finished the evening with music and dumb crambo -- that particularly

    Chateau and Country Life in France Mary Alsop King Waddington

  • The few works which treat on the subject have all become as obselete as "hot cockles" and "crambo."

    Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, August 21, 1841 Various

  • "Formal drinking" is usually played after dinner and is more and more coming to take the place of charades, sleight-of-hand performances, magic lantern shows, "dumb crambo," et cetera, as the parlor amusement par excellence.

    Perfect Behavior; a guide for ladies and gentlemen in all social crises Donald Ogden Stewart 1937

  • "Formal drinking" is usually played after dinner and is more and more coming to take the place of charades, sleight-of-hand performances, magic lantern shows, "dumb crambo," et cetera, as the parlor amusement par excellence.

    Perfect Behavior 1922

Comments

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  • A word game that wasn't listed! (Well, sionnach has dumb crambo). Has anyone played it?

    January 29, 2010