cramp a also cramped EDD ~ adj 3 (1) cramp-hand, (2) ~ -word.
   1 Of a person, difficult to understand, amusing, because of clever or humorous speech.
   T 22-64 They gets into this house, and there's a woman here—she's a kind of a cramp hand; she was liable to say anything... My uncle he was a cramp hand in dressing-up, mummering—talk, all kinds of talk.
   2 Of words or speech, old-fashioned, dialectal, difficult to understand.
   1933 GREENLEAF 62 [She] called it 'a cramped song,' and the imperfections in the lines show how hard it was for her to remember and sing it... Newfoundlanders use 'cramped' in much the same sense that we say 'tongue-twister.' T 22-64 [The mummers] used to have some awful cramp talk. T 31/4-64 He was wonderful [at] all them old cramp songs, all them old-fashioned ones about steamers, etc. 1971 NOSEWORTHY 188 Cramp words, cramp names—unusual dialect words or pronunciations, which the local people think peculiar.

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