An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/Krippe

by Friedrich Kluge

Krippe, feminine, ‘crib,’ from the equivalent Middle High German krippe, Old High German chrippa, feminine, for chrippja (Gothic *kribjô; for High German pp. from Gothic bj, compare further Rippe, Suppe, and üppig); corresponding to Old Saxon kribbia, kribba, Anglo-Saxon cribb, English crib. In High German occurs a variant with pf, which is phonetically obscure, Old High German chripfa, Middle High German and Modern High German kripfe; there are also dialectic forms with u in the stem, Swiss krüpfli, Low German krübbe, Anglo-Saxon crybb, Scandinavian krubba, ‘crib.’ This word, in Gothic uzêta, ‘the thing from which one feeds,’ is connected with Middle High German krëbe, ‘basket’; hence ‘resembling a basket, woven,’ was perhaps the primary meaning of Krippe. The West Teutonic word passed into Romance — Italian greppia, Provençal crupia (the latter connected with the Teutonic forms in u mentioned above), Modern French crèche (whence English cratch, ‘a grated crib,’ Middle English crache).