Does anyone know the origin of the phrase "crib notes" or how 'crib' became know as plagerize?

Welcome, Evanston Dad.

I didn't find anything on cribbing (oops, that's what horses do), but I did find this odious (and maybe odiferous)
word at Terry O'Connor's Word for Word site:

Enough with the smellfungus, already
Suzanne King, Associate Professor of Accounting at the University of Charleston, hit a nerve when she asked about the word smellfungus. "I came across it in an old thesaurus," she wrote. "Its meaning was described to be a critic. I've always thought it was a colorful word and that more than a few artist, actors, etc., would feel satisfaction in using it to describe the person who reviewed their work or performances. What is its derivation and history?"


I should be cranky about this, given that my "day" job used to that of literary editor, and we critics receive enough return criticism without adding to attackers' armoury of invective.
Oh well.
Smellfungus comes from the pen of Irish-born writer Laurence Sterne (1713-68), the author of the delicious Tristram Shandy. Sterne took exception to a work entitled Travels Through France and Italy by Tobias Smollett, published in 1766.
Young Sterne didn't like the whinging tone of the book, and coined smellfungus to describe Smollett. The word, according to the SOED, entered the language in the early 19th century as a term for grumblers and fault-finders.
If anyone else finds obscure, offensive words for incredibly useful people such as literary critcs, can they please keep them to themselves.

way down the list of senses for 'crib' are these:

7. colloq. To pilfer, purloin, steal; to appropriate furtively (a small part of anything). [Prob. orig. Thieves' slang, connected with sense 7 of the n.]
1748 Dyche Dict., Crib, to withhold, keep back, pinch, or thieve a part out of money given to lay out for necessaries. 1772 Foote Nabob 1. Wks. 1799 II. 298 A brace of birds and a hare, that I cribbed this morning out of a basket of game. 1795 Hull Advertiser 31 Oct. 4/2 We would never have cribb'd your papers. 1825 Cobbett Rur. Rides 28 Bits of ground cribbed+at different times from the forest. 1862 Mrs. H. Wood Mrs. Hallib. ii. xii. 204 We crib the time from play-hours. 1884 Times (Weekly Ed.) 17 Oct. 2/3 How many Tory seats he can crib there.
absol. 1760 C. Johnston Chrysal (1822) I. 174 Cribbing from the till. a1839 Praed Poems (1864) II. 8 Both of old were known to crib, And both were very apt to fib!

8. colloq. To take or copy (a passage, a piece of translation, etc.) without acknowledgement, and use as one's own; to plagiarize.
1778 J. Home Alfred Prol., And crib the prologue from the bill of fare. 1844 J. T. J. Hewlett Parsons & W. xlvii, Flogged for cribbing another boy's verses. 1862 Sala Accepted Addr. 168 Antiquarian anecdotes (cribbed from Hone, etc.).
absol. 1862 Shirley Nugæ Crit. vi. 266, I rather suspect that Homer+cribbed without+compunction from every old ballad that came in his way. 1892 Pall Mall G. 19 Oct. 3/1 At school+it was dishonourable to ‘crib’ because it would be to unfairly injure+others. [OED]

{sense 7 of the noun 'crib' is a small basket or bag -- bag being another colloquial term for steal}