crawl
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: enpr: krôl
ipa: /kɹɔːl/
enpr: krôl
ipa: /kɹɔl/
enpr: kräl
ipa: /kɹɑl/
enpr: krôl
ipa: /kɹoːl/
rhymes: -ɔːl
homophone: kraal
Forms: form: crawls
form: crawling
form: crawled
form: crawled
Etymology: From Middle English crawlen, crewlen, creulen, crallen, *cravelen, from Old Norse krafla (compare Danish kravle (“to crawl, creep”), Swedish kravla, kräla (“to creep, crawl”)), from Proto-Germanic *krablōną (compare Saterland Frisian krabbelje, Dutch krabbelen, German Low German krabbeln, German krabbeln), frequentative of *krabbōną (“to scratch, scrape”). Compare also Saterland Frisian krauelje (“to crawl, scuttle”), West Frisian kreauwelje (“to crawl”), Dutch krevelen, krieuwelen (“to crawl”), German Low German kribbeln, German kribbeln (“to creep, crawl, tingle”). See also crab, crabble.
Senses: examples: text: Clutching my wounded side, I crawled back to the trench.
text: A VVorm finds vvhat it ſearches after, only by Feeling, as it cravvls from one thing to another. VVhereas a Man, having Eyes, ſees it in a Moment, all before him.
ref: 1701, Nehemiah Grew, “Of Celestial Mind”, in Cosmologia Sacra: Or A Discourse of the Universe as It is the Creature and Kingdom of God. […], London: […] W[illiam] Rogers, S[amuel] Smith, and B[enjamin] Walford: […], →OCLC, 2nd book, paragraph 32, page 83:
text: 'Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,' he said. 'The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]'
ref: 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter VII, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
glosses: To creep; to move slowly on hands and knees, or by dragging the body along the ground.
examples: text: The rush-hour traffic crawled around the bypass.
glosses: To move forward slowly, with frequent stops.
examples: text: Don’t come crawling to me with your useless apologies!
text: Our hard-ruled king. Again, there is sprung up. An heretic, an arch one, Cranmer; one. Hath crawled into the favour of the king
ref: 1613 (date written), William Shakespeare, [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
synonyms: kowtow
grovel
glosses: To act in a servile manner.
glosses: Followed by with: see crawl with.
examples: text: The horrible sight made my skin crawl.
glosses: To feel a swarming sensation.
examples: text: I think I’ll crawl the next hundred metres.
glosses: To swim using the crawl stroke.
examples: text: The baby crawled the entire second floor.
glosses: To move over (an area) on hands and knees.
examples: text: They crawled the downtown bars.
text: "I used to crawl the Dungeon like you do, Bell, saving up money... But one day, I screwed verything up. Got thoroughly wrecked by a monster, and it ate my right arm."
ref: 2015, Fujino Omori, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 4 (light novel), Yen Press LLC, →ISBN:
text: Eric had crawled the downtown bar scene with these guys many nights, after gigs and back when they were all in college together. Eric liked hanging with them, because they were as comfortable hanging anywhere—sports bars; gay clubs; […]
ref: 2019, Leigh Landry, Cajun Two-Step: The Complete Series, Leigh Landry:
text: One of the later Crawl trailers, the Nintendo Switch version, advertises its key gameplay in a sentence, “Crawl the dungeon while your friends possess the traps, beasts, and bosses against you” before later adopting the phrase […]
ref: 2021, Antonio Alcala Gonzalez, Carl H. Sederholm, Lovecraft in the 21st Century: Dead, But Still Dreaming, Routledge, →ISBN:
glosses: To move over (an area) slowly, with frequent stops.
examples: text: Yahoo Search has updated its Slurp Crawler to crawl websites faster and more efficiently.
glosses: To visit files or web sites in order to index them for searching.
Synonyms: word: creep
word: inch
word: plod
word: scuttle
word: wriggle
Hypernyms: word: move slowly
Hyponyms: word: army crawl
word: grovel
Derived terms: acrawl
backcrawl
becrawl
bellycrawl
crawlable
crawl-a-bottom
crawl before one can walk
crawl before one walks
crawler
crawl-in
crawlingly
crawlingness
crawling peg
crawl over each other
crawlsome
crawl up someone's ass
crawlway
crawly
cross-crawl
flesh-crawling
kerb crawling
make someone's skin crawl
newscrawl
outcrawl
recrawl
skin-crawling
upcrawl
wallcrawl
Related terms: word: trudge
word: sneak