crack a crib

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crack a crib (third-person singular simple present cracks a crib, present participle cracking a crib, simple past and past participle cracked a crib)

1. (criminal slang, dated) To break into a house.
   • 1891, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Red-Headed League:

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

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

     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.