Definition of "creeping"

Then, in January, a creeping tsunami of train cancellations, triggered by major staff absences as a result of the aggressive transmissibility of Omicron, heaped further misery on rail users.

2022 January 12, Nigel Harris, “Comment: Unhappy start to 2022”, in RAIL, number 948, page 3

It is indubitably certain, therefore, that he is able to attend, and actually attends, to all things at the same moment; to the motions of a seed, or a leaf, or an atom; to the creepings of a worm, the flutterings of an insect, and the journeys of a mite […]

1824, Timothy Dwight, Theology, Explained and Defended in a Series of Sermons