verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE


Years and years ago, I remember reading in a book on AmE usage that the phrasal turn a baby creeps before it walks was to some extent more common to AmE than to BrE, which preferred exclusively the "crawl" version.


And so, I just recently checked on the accuracy of that information on NGram Viewer, and it actually was fact...more than a century ago!


What I would like you to tell is if it would sound sort of weird to hear someone say today in the US that a child "creeps" before walking and running (see Synonyms) rather than it crawls.


Also, what's the story to those terms? How did "to crawl" come to prevail and supersede "to creep" to describe the way a baby moves around?


As with a plant, so with a child. His mind grows by natural stages. A child creeps before he walks, sits before he stands, cries before he laughs, babbles before he talks, draws a circle before he draws a square, lies before he tells the truth, and is selfish before he is altruistic. Such sequences are part of the order of Nature... Every child, therefore, has a unique pattern of growth, but that pattern is a variant of a basic ground plan. (Bigge & Hunt, 1962, p. 166)


My impression is that "to creep" instead of "to crawl" for how a baby moves around might have made a lot of sense in the old days if you consider the way babies were dressed back then. Think also of Swee'Pea's outfit in Popeye the Sailorman cartoons.


Besides, here is a article I just found on Parent.com, which asserts a difference between saying "to creep" and "to crawl."



Answer



NG, as an Ame speaker who has (as a doctor) delivered ~100 babies then taken care of them as they grew up, needing to know the stages of development and milestones, and needing to discuss them with (usually mom), I think I can attest with some authority to which one is common in my part of the US.


A baby crawls before it cruises (walks by holding on to things) before it toddles (takes a few unsteady steps and falls - where we get our word toddler from) before it walks. (We used the Denver Development Milestones Test, or DDII, to keep track of progress.)


Having said all that, I'm aware of creeps (alone or with along/across) and do not find it odd. In general, though, things that creep along the floor are doing so stealthily (the cat crept up on/to the bird and sprang), or horrifyingly (the severed hand crept across the floor) - generally. We even have a name for this for kids: creepy-crawly. In addition, I had a toy when I was young called Creepy Crawlers, which allowed me to make/bake plastic bugs, and, as I was a good mon, my kids did as well. (To see how this worked, visit here.)


Fun question!


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