FluentPlex

sprawl

/spɹɔl/ verb C1
  1. To sit with the limbs spread out.
  2. To spread out in a disorderly fashion; to straggle.
  3. To scoot the legs backwards, so as to land on the upper back of an opponent attempting a takedown.

He/she/it sprawls · Past sprawled · Past participle sprawled · -ing form sprawling

+ Save to review

Verb forms

Base form
sprawl
He/she/it
sprawls
Past
sprawled
Past participle
sprawled
-ing form
sprawling

From the library

In that deeply peaceful atmosphere one could forget, or remember only as some fantastic nightmare, that darkened study with the sprawling, bloodstained figure on the floor.
The Valley of Fear, p. 62 · C1
The dead man lay on his back, sprawling with outstretched limbs in the centre of the room.
The Valley of Fear, p. 27 · C1
I had a vision of him sprawling upon the floor with blood running down his face while Holmes rummaged him for weapons.
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, p. 92 · B2
“Here!” cried Alice, quite forgetting in the flurry of the moment how large she had grown in the last few minutes, and she jumped up in such a hurry that she tipped over the jury-box with the edge of her skirt, upsetting all the jurymen on to the heads of the crowd below, and there they lay sprawling about, reminding her very much of a globe of goldfish she had accidentally upset the week before.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, p. 90 · B2

Other matches

Learn sprawl in real texts

With a free account, hover any word in the library for its meaning, hear it read aloud, save words for review timed to your memory, and see how much of each book you already know.

Create free account
Words, meanings, pronunciations and translations from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); how common each word is from wordfreq. Made into this dictionary by FluentPlex.