crawler
crawler noun: a child who is able to creep using its hands and knees but is not able to walk.
Noun (1)
crawler (plural crawlers)
- A child who is able to creep using its hands and knees but is not able to walk.
- A crawl swimmer.
- A tractor crawler, a motorized vehicle that uses caterpillar tracks instead of wheels.
- A software bot that autonomously follows connected paths such as links between web pages.
- Crawler-based search engines have three major elements. The first is the spider, also called the crawler, which visits a web page, reads it, and then follows links to other pages within the site.2008, Alex Michael, Ben Salter, Marketing Through Search Optimization, Routledge, →ISBN, page xii
- These serve as an algorithmic way to judge the “mobileness” of a site, and similar algorithms are likely to be used by the search crawlers.2011, James Pearce, Professional Mobile Web Development with WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal, page 466
- Synonyms:
- spider
- A mobile stage in the development of stationary hemipteran insects such as scale insects—generally the first instar.
- A cab that is driven slowly along while its driver looks out for a fare.
- MATERIALS required: Two hanks of crepe or plain silk (this amount makes sleeves, also directions for which are given, though the crawler in the photograph is sleeveless); […]1930, The Homestead, Bloemfontein, →OCLC, page 28, column 1
- INFANTS’ CRAWLER-AND-SHIRT SETS. […] Crawlers have lined bibs accented with white piping.1980, Montgomery Ward, “More warmth for Toddlers and Infants, too”, in Fall & Winter ’80, Chicago, Ill., →OCLC, page 534, column 3
- Synonym of crawler crane.
- Synonyms:
- crawler crane
Noun (2)
crawler (plural crawlers)
- A person who is abused, physically or verbally, and returns to the abuser a supplicant.
- A sycophant.
crawler meaning in Tamil, Arabic and Malay
crawler in Tamil
- மந்தஊர்தி, ஊருயிர், ஊர்வன, ஊர்ந்து செல்பவர், தவழ், ஊர்
crawler in Arabic
- tractor crawler
- زَحَّافَة zaḥḥāfa
crawler in Malay
- tractor crawler
- traktor rangkak
- software bot
- perangkak
Examples of crawler in a sentence
- The beams were transported to the site by road and lifted into place using two crawler cranes.
- Thus, crawlers that do not obey a website’s posted robots.txt file may be breaching the site’s ToS.
- For many fans of the dungeon crawler genre, the ultimate risk is permadeath.
Synonyms of crawler
Forms of crawler
| plural | crawlers |
|---|
Origin of crawler
From crawl (“to move slowly, by dragging the body along the ground”) + -er.
From crawl (“to act in a servile manner”) + -er. From the Australian convict period (1788–1850); a prisoner who was purposely and extensively abused by an overseer (also a convict) and thereby driven to escape but who, finding it impossible to survive in the Australian bush, surrenders to this overseer, who would then have his penal term reduced. The particular crawler was picked for his weak personality and might escape and return a number of times increasing his own penal term each time. According to James Tucker, some convict overseers had their sentences extensively reduced using this odious practice.
Words formed from crawler
Phrases with crawler
Words that rhyme with crawler
Questions about crawler
- What does crawler mean?
- Crawler means a child who is able to creep using its hands and knees but is not able to walk.
- What is crawler in Tamil?
- Crawler in Tamil is மந்தஊர்தி, ஊருயிர், ஊர்வன. See Crawler meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is crawler?
- Crawler is a noun.
- What is the plural of crawler?
- The plural of crawler is crawlers.
Words near crawler in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: crawler (page history and authors); crawler (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 crawler.ogg.
Cite this entry: “crawler.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crawler. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.