crawl

present singular third person crawls · participle present crawling · participle past crawled · past crawled

1. intransitiveTo 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.

   4 more examples

   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 B[enjamin] Walford: […], →OCLC, 2nd book, paragraph 32, page 83

   'Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,' he said. 'The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]'

   1963, Margery Allingham, chapter VII, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

   The other species was a scale worm, Lepidonotus cirratus, which, when undisturbed, crawled rapidly about, reminding one of a centipede, but with the addition of numbers of hairy spines at each side and over-lapping scales.

   1915, Vasculum (Substitute), volumes 1-5, page 84

   […] 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?)

2. intransitiveTo 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.

   4 more examples

   […] and catching hold with his hand upon the rough cragges, […] he crawled up to the toppe thereof

   1603, Philemon Holland, The Philosophie, commonlie called, The Morals written by the learned Philoſopher Plutarch of Chæronea

   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

   Months and seasons crawled along,

   1850, Kingsley, Alt. Locke, xxx

3. intransitiveTo 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!

   1 more example

   Our hard-ruled king. Again, there is sprung up. An heretic, an arch one, Cranmer; one. Hath crawled into the favour of the king

   1613 (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), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]

   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.

   2 more examples

   A little […] Nerve […] which crawls up and down the Coat of the Liver.

   1668, Culpepper and Cole, Barthol. Anat., I. xv. 38

   Passion-flowers, ipomaeas, and hibiscus crawled over every wall.

   1867, Lady Herbert, Cradle L., ii. 57

5. intransitivetransitiveTo swim using the crawl stroke.

   I think I'll crawl instead of breaststroke.

   1 more example

   I think I'll crawl the next hundred metres.

6. intransitiveFollowed by with: see crawl with.
7. intransitiveTo 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.

   1 more example

   [Their] dirtiness positively made me crawl.

   1880, Robert Grant, The Confessions of a Frivolous Girl: A Story of Fashioable Life, page 161

8. intransitiveceramic glaze; etc; ceramic glaze; etcTo spread unevenly; to fail to be or remain evenly spread.
9. transitiveTo move over (an area) on hands and knees, or by dragging the body along.

   The baby crawled the entire second floor.

   3 more examples

   […] the nightmare horrors that crawled the reeking walls and floor.

   1912, Harold Grahame Richards, Centene, page 87

   His Slav features regarded me with the wooden indifference he would have shown to an insect crawling the wall.

   1944 August 28, Blue Book magazine

   Wilbur thought of Ronnie being up above. He crawled the ladder as fast as he could, […]

   1998, None, Thy Will Be Done: 134 Touching Personal Stories of Fatalities Among Plain People

10. transitiveTo move over (an area) slowly, with frequent stops.

    They crawled the downtown bars.

    3 more examples

    "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

    Eric had crawled the downtown bar scene with these guys many nights, after gigs and back when they were all in college together. Eric liked hanging with them, because they were as comfortable hanging anywhere—sports bars; gay clubs; […]

    2019, Leigh Landry, Cajun Two-Step: The Complete Series, Leigh Landry

    One of the later Crawl trailers, the Nintendo Switch version, advertises its key gameplay in a sentence, “Crawl the dungeon while your friends possess the traps, beasts, and bosses against you” before later adopting the phrase […]

    2021, Antonio Alcala Gonzalez, Carl H. Sederholm, Lovecraft in the 21st Century: Dead, But Still Dreaming, Routledge, →ISBN

11. InternettransitiveTo 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.

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).

   For our boba crawl in Berkeley, we visited five notable bubble tea chains — ChaHalo, Chicha San Chen, Heytea, TP Tea and Yi Fang Taiwan Fruit Tea — to compare their milk tea with tapioca.

   2026 August 15, Irene Adeline Milanez, “We tasted boba from some of the Bay Area’s most popular chains. Here’s our No. 1”, in San Francisco Chronicle, archived from the original on 16 Aug 2026

3. A rapid swimming stroke with alternate overarm strokes and a fluttering kick.
4. figurativelyA very slow pace.

   My computer has slowed down to a crawl since I installed that software package.

5. broadcastingA piece of horizontally or vertically scrolling text overlaid on the main image.

   1 more example

   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 service to the Capitol, a wealthy metropolis that owes its creature comforts to an oppressive dictatorship.

plural crawls

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