crawl
Pronunciation
  • (British) enPR: krôl, IPA: /kɹɔːl/
  • (America) enPR: krôl, IPA: /kɹɔl/
  • (cot-caught) enPR: kräl, IPA: /kɹɑl/
Verb

crawl (crawls, present participle crawling; past and past participle crawled)

  1. (intransitive) To creep; to move slowly on hands and knees, or by dragging the body along the ground.
    • A worm finds what it searches after only by feeling, as it crawls from one thing to another.
    Clutching my wounded side, I crawled back to the trench.
  2. (intransitive) To move forward slowly, with frequent stops.
    The rush-hour traffic crawled around the bypass.
  3. (intransitive) To act in a servile manner.
    Don't come crawling to me with your useless apologies!
    • 1613, William Shakespeare; [John Fletcher], “The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act III, scene ii]:
      Our hard-ruled king. Again, there is sprung up. An heretic, an arch one, Cranmer; one. Hath crawled into the favour of the king
  4. (intransitive, with "with") See crawl with.
  5. (intransitive) To feel a swarm#Verb|swarming sensation.
    The horrible sight made my skin crawl.
  6. (intransitive) To swim using the crawl stroke.
    I think I'll crawl the next hundred metres.
  7. (transitive) To move over an area on hands and knees.
    The baby crawled the entire second floor.
  8. (intransitive) To visit while becoming inebriated.
    They crawled the downtown bars.
  9. (transitive) To visit files or web sites in order to index them for searching.
    Yahoo Search has updated its Slurp Crawler to crawl web sites faster and more efficiently.
Translations Translations
  • French: avancer au pas
  • German: kriechen
  • Portuguese: lesmar
  • Russian: ползти́
  • Spanish: ir a paso de tortuga
Translations
  • French: s'aplatir devant, s'aplatir
  • Portuguese: rastejar
  • Russian: лебези́ть
  • Spanish: humillarse, humillarse ante, arrastrar
Translations
  • French: grouiller de, grouiller
  • German: wimmeln
  • Italian: brulicare
  • Russian: кише́ть
  • Spanish: estar de cuajado, estar cuajado
Translations Translations
  • French: faire le crawl
  • German: kraulen
  • Italian: nuotare a crawl
  • Russian: плыть кроль
Noun

crawl (plural crawls)

  1. The act of moving slowly on hands and knees etc, or with frequent stops.
  2. A rapid swimming stroke with alternate overarm strokes and a fluttering kick.
  3. (figurative) A very slow pace.
    My computer has slowed down to a crawl since I installed that software package.
  4. (television, film) A piece of horizontally or vertically scrolling text overlaid on the main image.
    • 22 March 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Hunger Games[http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-hunger-games,71293/]
      The opening crawl (and a stirring propaganda movie) informs us that “The Hunger Games” are an annual event in Panem, a North American nation divided into 12 different districts, each in service to the Capitol, a wealthy metropolis that owes its creature comforts to an oppressive dictatorship.
Translations Translations Noun

crawl (plural crawls)

  1. A pen or enclosure of stakes and hurdles for holding fish.



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