crack a crib

present singular third person cracks a crib · participle present cracking a crib · participle past cracked a crib · past cracked a crib

1. datedcrime slangTo break into a house.

   He'll crack a crib in Scotland one week, and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next.

   1891, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Red-Headed League

   1 more example

   Here in Macedonia I learned that honey is not so successful as one believes, that no bee ever realizes its full intention, and that the perfumer is a clumsy bungler who never cracks the fragile crib he covets, by approaching a town built in the Turkish manner, with a multitude of little gardens, at a time when the sun had been working for many hours on the acacia trees.

   1942, Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Canongate, published 2006, page 795