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Plural / 3rd person of crawl. Showing the entry for crawl.

crawl

UK/kɹɔːl/ US/kɹoːl/ fairly common
verb (5) noun (3)

verb

1.

move slowly; in the case of people or animals with the body near the ground

  • “The crocodile was crawling along the riverbed”
Synonyms
2.

feel as if crawling with insects

  • “My skin crawled--I was terrified”
3.

be crawling with

  • “The old cheese was crawling with maggots”
4.
5.

swim by doing the crawl

  • “European children learn the breast stroke; they often don”

noun

1.

a very slow movement

  • “the traffic advanced at a crawl”
2.
3.

a slow creeping mode of locomotion (on hands and knees or dragging the body)

  • “a crawl was all that the injured man could manage”
  • “the traffic moved at a creep”
Synonyms

Origin

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.

Phrases

  • army crawl
  • Australian crawl
  • back crawl
  • bear crawl
  • crab crawl
  • crawl before one can walk
  • crawl before one walks
  • crawl control
  • crawl into a hole
  • crawl out of the woodwork
  • crawl over each other
  • crawl space

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WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.