Word.ws English Dictionary

crawl

UK/kɹɔːl/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/kɹoːl/

crawl 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.

crawl: to move by dragging one's body along or close to a surface, like a worm or insect, or on one's...
Image: תהלה הרץ, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) 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.
    • 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.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...
  2. (intransitive) To move or progress slowly or laboriously, or with great difficulty (for example due to feebleness) or frequent stops.
    • The rush-hour traffic crawled around the bypass.
    • […] and catching hold with his hand upon the rough cragges, […] he crawled up to the toppe thereof1603, Philemon Holland, The Philosophie, commonlie called, The Morals written by the learned Philoſopher Plutarch of Chæronea
  3. (intransitive) To advance by guile and servility; to act in a servile manner, trying to please someone in order to gain favor.
    • Don’t come crawling to me with your useless apologies!
    • Our hard-ruled king. Again, there is sprung up. An heretic, an arch one, Cranmer; one. Hath crawled into the favour of the king1613 (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)...
    Synonyms:
    kowtow, grovel
  4. To spread by extending tendrils, stems, or branches; to creep or trail (as a vine).
    • The old house was covered in vines crawling over every available surface.
    • A little […] Nerve […] which crawls up and down the Coat of the Liver.1668, Culpepper and Cole, Barthol. Anat., I. xv. 38
  5. (intransitive, transitive) To swim using the crawl stroke.
    • I think I'll crawl instead of breaststroke.
    • I think I'll crawl the next hundred metres.
  6. (intransitive) Followed by with: see crawl with.
  7. (intransitive) To feel a swarming sensation; to have a sensation like that produced by insects crawling over one's body.
    • The horrible sight made my skin crawl.
    • [Their] dirtiness positively made me crawl.1880, Robert Grant, The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl: A Story of Fashioable Life, page 161
  8. (intransitive, ceramic glaze, etc) To spread unevenly; to fail to be or remain evenly spread.
  9. (transitive) To move over (an area) on hands and knees, or by dragging the body along.
    • The baby crawled the entire second floor.
    • […] the nightmare horrors that crawled the reeking walls and floor.1912, Harold Grahame Richards, Centene, page 87
  10. (transitive) To move over (an area) slowly, with frequent stops.
    • They crawled the downtown bars.
    • "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."2015, Fujino Omori, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 4 (light novel), Yen Press LLC, →ISBN
  11. (Internet, transitive) To visit (files or web sites) in order to index them for searching.
    • Yahoo Search has updated its Slurp Crawler to crawl websites faster and more efficiently.

Noun (1)

crawl (plural crawls)

  1. The act of moving slowly on hands and knees, etc.
  2. The act of sequentially visiting a series of similar establishments (i.e., a bar crawl).
  3. A rapid swimming stroke with alternate overarm strokes and a fluttering kick.
  4. (figuratively) A very slow pace.
    • My computer has slowed down to a crawl since I installed that software package.
  5. A piece of horizontally or vertically scrolling text overlaid on the main image.
    • 22 March 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Hunger Gameshttp://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...

Noun (2)

crawl (plural crawls)

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

crawl meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

crawl in Hindi

to move along the ground
घिसटना ghisaṭnā

crawl in Tamil

to teem or swarm
ஊர் ūr
to move over an area on hands and knees
தவழ் tavaḻ
to feel swarming sensation
ஊர் ūr
to move along the ground
தவழ் tavaḻ

crawl in Marathi

रेंगाळणे, क्रॉल करण्यासाठी, रेंगाळायला

crawl in Urdu

کلبلانا, پیٹ کے بل چلنا
More languagesFewer languages
crawl in Bengali
হামাগুড়ি দেওয়া
crawl in Telugu
పాకు pāku, దేకు dēku
crawl in Malayalam
നിരങ്ങുക niraṅṅuka
crawl in Kannada
ತೆವಳುವಿಕೆ, ಅಂಬೆಗಾಲಿಡುವಿಕೆ, ದೇಕುವಿಕೆ, ತೆವಳೀಜು
crawl in Punjabi
ਕ੍ਰੌਲ ਕਰਨ ਲਈ
crawl in Gujarati
ક્રોલ કરવા માટે, ક્રોલ કરવા, ક્રોલ કરવું
crawl in Odia
କ୍ରଲ କରିବା ପାଇଁ, କ୍ରଲ୍ କରିବା ପାଇଁ, କ୍ରଲ କରିବା
crawl in Assamese
বগা boga, বাগা baga
crawl in Nepali
क्रल गर्न, क्रल गर्नाका लागि, क्रल गर्नाका निम्ति
crawl in Arabic
زَحَفَ zaḥafa, دَبَّ dabba
crawl in Malay
rangkak, gaya rangkak
crawl in Persian
خزیدن xazidan
crawl in Thai
คลาน klaan
crawl in Vietnamese
bò, trườn
crawl in Myanmar
တွား twa:

Examples of crawl in a sentence

  • 'Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,' he said.1963, Margery Allingham, chapter VII, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
  • […] 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.2021, Maximilian Hawker, Rory Hobble and the Voyage to Haligogen (page 250?)
  • While we Vnburthen'd crawle toward death.1605, Shakespeare, Lear, I, i, 42
  • Sickneese posteth to us, but crawleth from us.1654, R. Whitlock, Zootomia, 124

All 40 example sentences with crawl

Synonyms of crawl

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of crawl

Forms of crawl

Verb
third-person singular presentcrawls
present participlecrawling
past participlecrawled
pastcrawled
Noun
pluralcrawls

Past tense of crawl: crawled

Plural of crawl: crawls

Origin of crawl

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.

Compare kraal.

Words formed from crawl

Phrases with crawl

Words that rhyme with crawl

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about crawl

What does crawl mean?
Crawl means 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.
What is crawl in Hindi?
Crawl in Hindi is घिसटना (ghisaṭnā). See Crawl meaning in Hindi.
How do you use crawl in a sentence?
'Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,' he said.
What part of speech is crawl?
Crawl can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce crawl?
Crawl is pronounced /kɹɔːl/ (UK).
What is the past tense of crawl?
The past tense of crawl is crawled.

Words near crawl in the dictionary

  1. crawing
  2. crawk
  3. crawked
  4. crawking
  5. crawks
  6. crawl
  7. crawl before one can walk
  8. crawl before one walks
  9. crawl control
  10. crawl into a hole
  11. crawl out of the woodwork

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crawl (page history and authors); crawl (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); crawl (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); crawl (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); നിരങ്ങുക (Malayalam) (page history and authors); crawl (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); crawl (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); crawl (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); crawl (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); বগা (Assamese) (page history and authors); crawl (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-crawl.ogg.

Cite this entry: “crawl.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crawl. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.