crust

noun

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\ ˈkrəst

Definition of crust

1a : the hardened exterior or surface part of bread

b : a piece of this or of bread grown dry or hard

2a : the pastry shell of a pie : piecrust

b : the bready layer that forms the foundation of a pizza

3 : a hard or brittle external coat or covering: such as

a : a hard surface layer (as of soil or snow)

b : the outer part of a planet, moon, or asteroid composed essentially of crystalline rocks

c : a deposit built up on the interior surface of a wine bottle during long aging

d : an encrusting deposit (as of the eye) of dried secretions or exudate also : scab

4 : gall, nerve

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Examples of crust in a Sentence

Her children prefer to eat their sandwiches with the crust cut off. a pie with flaky crust He likes pizza with thin crust.

Recent Examples on the Web They are then filled with cheese and toppings and finished with a thin layer of crust and a ladleful of tangy tomato sauce. — al, "The best places to get pizza and tacos in Birmingham," 27 Dec. 2019 Break off an edge of the browned crust and use it to stir the ingredients together into golden, molten dip; in restaurants the servers sometimes do this step tableside, which is gracious but takes away from half the fun of tackling this dish. — Los Angeles Times, "Will everyone in America soon be eating the khachapuri cheese boat?," 7 Sep. 2019 Pour into baked crust and spread with an offset spatula. — Tara Bench, Country Living, "Boarded-Up Window Caramel Nut Tart," 6 Sep. 2019 For a dinner option, try slowly reheating your leftovers in a pot with 1 1/2 cup stock and 1 1/2 cup milk until creamy then make a flaky pie crust for a savory turkey pot pie that will surely impress. — Dana Mcmahan, The Courier-Journal, "Turkey and mashed potatoes galore. So what do you do with your Thanksgiving leftovers?," 27 Nov. 2019 Make and freeze pie crust, bang out your cranberry sauce, which will keep for at least three days, or try some make-ahead Thanksgiving appetizers. — Kate Merker, Good Housekeeping, "How to Reheat Turkey the Best Way so It Stays Tender," 14 Nov. 2019 For making pie crusts, there are circles from 5 to 16 inches across. — BostonGlobe.com, "Make room for Tovolo’s silicone pastry mat - The Boston Globe," 1 Oct. 2019 Pour filling into pie crust and place pie on rimmed baking sheet. — Rick Nelson, chicagotribune.com, "‘King of Lowcountry cooking’ shares tips on cuisine with a Southern accent," 27 Nov. 2019 But the planets formed by rearranging their ingredients through heat -- metals melted to form the core while silicates created a mantle and crust. — Ashley Strickland, CNN, "Ice fossils found in 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite reveal building blocks of our solar system," 26 Nov. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'crust.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

History and Etymology for crust

Middle English crouste, cruste, borrowed from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French cruste, crouste, going back to Latin crusta "hard coating or surface layer, shell of an arthropod or crustacean, mineral flake, stone slab used in paneling," perhaps, if going back to *krus-to- "something crushed or pounded into a hard layer," from a zero-grade nominal derivative of Indo-European *kreu̯s- "beat, crush, pound," whence also Old English hruse "earth, ground," Old High German roso, rosa "crust, layer of ice" (going back to Germanic *hrusōn-) — more at anacrusis

Note: The hypothetical base *krus-to- is suggested by Michiel de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 147, though the older handbooks (Walde-Hoffman, Ernout-Meillet) tend to support a connection with Greek krýos "icy cold, frost" and other derivatives, going back to a presumed homonymous *krus- (see cryo-). As de Vaan points out, however, Latin crusta does not mean "ice." The original sense of the Germanic noun *hrusōn- is not certain. Greek krýstallos "ice, rock crystal" is almost certainly unrelated (see crystal entry 1).