Meanings
- not comparableSprawling; covered or filled (with something sprawling).
1887, Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, New York and London: Street & Smith, Part 2, Chapter 4, p. 129, […] he saw […] a man lying flat upon his face upon the ground, with his arms and legs all asprawl.
3 more examples
[…] Milton […] fully clothed, asprawl on the couch, lay snoring with a soft, blubbering sound,
1951, William Styron, chapter 1, in Lie Down in Darkness, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, page 241984, J. P. Donleavy, De Alfonce Tennis, New York: Dutton / Seymour Lawrence, Part 5, p. 86, a vast drawing room asprawl with immense sofas, high backed chairs, two massive refectory tables and four chimney pieces
[…] I see a bicycle asprawl in abandon among the ferns, handlebars turned sideways and its front wheel jutting up at a somehow unseemly angle,
2005, John Banville, The Sea, London: Picador, Part 1, p. 113
- Sprawling over or across.
Hundreds were asprawl the open space between the Cross and the kirkyard.
1947, James Barke, The Song in the Green Thorn Tree, London: Collins, Part 1, p. 783 more examples
All through the night which followed her panic flight from the huge, heavy-footed figure that had groped out for her, called to her, and dropped asprawl her own small cloak in the doorway, Denny Bolton’s blood-soiled face and drunkenly reckless laugh had been with her,
1914, Larry Evans, chapter 11, in Once to Every Man, New York: H. K. Fly, pages 151–152From a distance the wood looked like a cloak, flung carelessly asprawl the shoulder of the hill,
1977, Ewan Clarkson, chapter 3, in The Badgers of Summercombe,, New York: Dutton, page 18[…] she thought that not for anything would she wish him to see her naked thus, naked and cut, asprawl a windowsill.
1994, Edna O’Brien, House of Splendid Isolation, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, page 147
Origin
Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with asprawl
Cite this entry
asprawl. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/asprawl
“asprawl.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/asprawl. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “asprawl,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/asprawl.
Source: asprawl on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.