crawl

Etymology 1

From Middle English crawlen, crewlen, creulen, crallen, *cravelen, from Old Norse krafla (compare Danish kravle (“to crawl, creep”), Swedish kravla, kräla)), from Proto-Germanic *krablōną (compare Dutch krabbelen, German Low German krabbeln, German krabbeln), frequentative of *krabbōną (“to scratch, scrape”). Compare also West Frisian kreauwelje (“to crawl”), Dutch krevelen, krieuwelen (“to crawl”), German Low German kribbeln, German kribbeln (“to creep, crawl, tingle”). See also crab, crabble.

verb

1. (intransitive) To creep; to move slowly on hands and knees, or by dragging the body along the ground.
   Clutching my wounded side, I crawled back to the trench.
2. (intransitive) To move forward slowly, with frequent stops.
   The rush-hour traffic crawled around the bypass.
3. (intransitive) To act in a servile manner.
   Don’t come crawling to me with your useless apologies!
4. (intransitive) Followed by with: see crawl with.
5. (intransitive) To feel a swarming sensation.
   The horrible sight made my skin crawl.
6. (intransitive, transitive) To swim using the crawl stroke.
   I think I’ll crawl the next hundred metres.
7. (transitive) To move over (an area) on hands and knees.
   The baby crawled the entire second floor.
8. (transitive) To move over (an area) slowly, with frequent stops.
   They crawled the downtown bars.
   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.
   Yahoo Search has updated its Slurp Crawler to crawl websites faster and more efficiently.

noun

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.
   My computer has slowed down to a crawl since I installed that software package.
5. (television, film) A piece of horizontally or vertically scrolling text overlaid on the main image.
   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.

Etymology 2

Compare kraal.

noun

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