Definition of "crawl"

crawl¹

/kɹɔːl/

verb
third-person singular simple present crawls, present participle crawling, simple past and past participle crawled
1. (intransitive) To creep; to move slowly on hands and knees, or by dragging the body along the ground.
  Quotations
  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. Rogers, S. Smith, and B[enjamin] Walford: […], 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
2. (intransitive) To move forward slowly, with frequent stops.
3. (intransitive) To act in a servile manner.
  Quotations
  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, [Act III, scene ii]
4. (intransitive) Followed by with: see crawl with.
5. (intransitive) To feel a swarming sensation.
6. (intransitive, transitive) To swim using the crawl stroke.
7. (transitive) To move over (an area) on hands and knees.
8. (transitive) To move over (an area) slowly, with frequent stops.
  Quotations
  "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
  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
9. (transitive, Internet) To visit files or web sites in order to index them for searching.
noun
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).
3. A rapid swimming stroke with alternate overarm strokes and a fluttering kick.
4. (figurative) A very slow pace.
5. (television, film) A piece of horizontally or vertically scrolling text overlaid on the main image.
  Quotations
  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.
  22 March 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Hunger Games

crawl²

/kɹɔːl/

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

Definition of "crawl"

crawl1

verb

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

noun

Quotations

crawl2

noun

crawl¹

crawl²