crawl

From Middle English crawlen, creulen, *cravelen, from Old Norse krafla (compare Danish kravle ‘to crawl, creep’, Swedish kravla), from Proto-Germanic *krablōną (compare Dutch krabbelen, Low German krabbeln, Middle High German krappeln), frequentative of Proto-Germanic *krabbōną ‘to scratch, scrape’. More at crab.

• (UK) enPR: krôl, IPA^(key): /kɹɔːl/
• Rhymes: -ɔːl
• (US) enPR: krôl, IPA^(key): /kɹɔl/
• (cot–caught merger) enPR: kräl, IPA^(key): /kɹɑl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

crawl (third-person singular simple present crawls, present participle crawling, simple past and past participle crawled)

1. (intransitive) To creep; to move slowly on hands and knees, or by dragging the body along the ground.
   • Grew

     A worm finds what it searches after only by feeling, as it crawls from one thing to another.

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess‎:

     ‘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. […]’

   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!

   • Shakespeare

     hath crawled into the favour of the king

4. (intransitive, with "with") See crawl with.
5. (intransitive) To feel a 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.

• crawler

• German: kraulen

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. (figuratively) 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 scrolling text overlaid on the main image.
   • 22 March 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Hunger Games

     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.

Compare kraal.

crawl (plural crawls)

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

Borrowed from English crawl.

• IPA^(key): /kʁol/

• Audio

  (file)

crawl m (plural crawls)

1. crawl (swimming stroke)

• “crawl” in le Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Borrowed from English crawl.

crawl m (plural crawl)

1. crawl (swimming stroke)

Borrowed from English crawl.

crawl m (uncountable)

1. crawl (swimming stroke)

Borrowed from English crawl.

crawl c (uncountable)

1. crawl; swimming stroke

• crawla