crawl
/kɹɔl/ verb B2- To 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.
- To 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.
- To 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!
- 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.
- To swim using the crawl stroke. · I think I'll crawl instead of breaststroke.· I think I'll crawl the next hundred metres.
- Followed by with: see crawl with.
- To 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.
- To spread unevenly; to fail to be or remain evenly spread.
He/she/it crawls · Past crawled · Past participle crawled · -ing form crawling
Verb forms
- Base form
- crawl
- He/she/it
- crawls
- Past
- crawled
- Past participle
- crawled
- -ing form
- crawling
From the library
It has eight of these long legs, and as the monster crawls through the forest he seizes an animal with a leg and drags it to his mouth, where he eats it as a spider does a fly.
At last she crawled over the swaying floor to her bed, and lay down upon it; and Toto followed and lay down beside her.
Once, indeed, the Tin Woodman stepped upon a beetle that was crawling along the road, and killed the poor little thing.
Breaking the branches and crawling below,
Other matches
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