sprauchle
sprauchle verb: to move in a clumsy manner; to stumble or sprawl; to clamber up with difficulty.
Verb
sprauchle (third-person singular simple present sprauchles, present participle sprauchling, simple past and past participle sprauchled)
- To move in a clumsy manner; to stumble or sprawl; to clamber up with difficulty.
- We'll sprauchle yont life's roughsome way, / As canny as we dow; / An' souther oor affections aye, / In love's heart-warmin' lowe.1881, David Thomson, Musings Among the Heather: Being Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
- We've routh o' disappointments as / We sprauchle up the brae, / We dinna get the things we want, / We lose the things we hae ;1897, Robert McLean Calder, William Shillinglaw Crockett, A Berwickshire Bard: The Songs and Poems of Robert McLean Calder
Noun
sprauchle (plural sprauchles)
- An awkward or struggling movement; stumble.
- Well, Sir, just when the gentlemen had got within three yards of her, Nelly geid a bit awckward sprauchle, an' shot out a leg, but whether Nelly had mistaken her distance, or whether the men were up to her fa'en system an' wadna bite, never clearly appeared; but they werna forward in time to catch...1830, Andrew Picken, The dominie's legacy, by the author of 'The sectarian'., page 137
- But, with the planks bein' jammed as they were, he didn't sink as deep as his waist, an' after a sprauchle or two, that cost him his hat, he struggled out on the far side, an' moved on towards home, more muddled in his intellects than ever.1930, The Strand Magazine - Volume 80 -, page 535
Examples of sprauchle in a sentence
- However far he might sprauchle up the brae, he never forgot — or patronised — an old friend.1931, Arthur Alexander Thomson, The Burns We Love, page 86:
- Sandra, her man, Raymond an his wife, sprauchle ower roots an bushes, hurryin through the trees.2001, Janet Paisley, Not for Glory, page 265:
Forms of sprauchle
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | sprauchles |
| present participle | sprauchling |
| past participle | sprauchled |
| past | sprauchled |
| alternative form | sprackle |
| alternative form | sprachle |
| alternative form | spraickle |
| Noun | |
| plural | sprauchles |
Origin of sprauchle
From Icelandic spraukla, "to sprawl".
Questions about sprauchle
- What does sprauchle mean?
- Sprauchle means to move in a clumsy manner; to stumble or sprawl; to clamber up with difficulty.
- How do you use sprauchle in a sentence?
- However far he might sprauchle up the brae, he never forgot — or patronised — an old friend.
- What part of speech is sprauchle?
- Sprauchle can be a verb or a noun.
- What is the past tense of sprauchle?
- The past tense of sprauchle is sprauchled.
Words near sprauchle in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sprauchle (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.
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Cite this entry: “sprauchle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sprauchle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.