Meaning

noun a very small quantity of something

noun a person who is deemed to be despicable or contemptible

noun small piece of e.g. bread or cake

originFrom Middle English crome, cromme, crumme, crume, from Old English cruma (“crumb, fragment”), from Proto-Germanic *krumô, *krūmô (“fragment, crumb”), from Proto-Indo-European *grū-mo- (“something scraped together, lumber, junk; to claw, scratch”), from *ger- (“to turn, bend, twist, wind”). The b is unetymological, as in limb, appearing in the mid-15th century to match crumble and words like dumb,…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0