crawl
/kɹoːl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.77 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To move by dragging one's body along or close to a surface, like a worm or insect, or on one's hands and knees, like a human baby.
Intransitive verb
verb
To move or progress slowly or laboriously, or with great difficulty (for example due to feebleness) or frequent stops.
Intransitive verb
verb
To advance by guile and servility; to act in a servile manner, trying to please someone in order to gain favor.
Intransitive verb
Example Sentences
- "Clutching my wounded side, I crawled back to the trench."
- "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."
- "'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.[…]'"
- "The other species was a scale worm, Lepidonotus cirratus, which, when undisturbed, crawled rapidly about, reminding one of a centipede, but with the addition of numbers of hairy spines at each side and over-lapping scales."
- "[…] a large group of tornits approached, crawling over floor, wall and ceiling alike, their golden animal eyes glinting against the light of the occasional mushroom."
- "The rush-hour traffic crawled around the bypass."
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *gerbʰ-, crawlen, krafla, *krabblōną
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /kɹoːl/
- British English: /kɹɔːl/