CRAWLING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Crawling

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/krˈɔlɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Crawl v. i. (past & past part. crawled; pres. part. crawling)

To move slowly by drawing the body along the ground, as a worm; to move slowly on hands and knees; to creep. "A worm finds what it searches after only by feeling, as it crawls from one thing to another."

Hence, To move or advance in a feeble, slow, or timorous manner. "He was hardly able to crawl about the room." "The meanest thing that crawl'd beneath my eyes."

To advance slowly and furtively; to insinuate one's self; to advance or gain influence by servile or obsequious conduct. "Secretly crawling up the battered walls." "Hath crawled into the favor of the king." "Absurd opinions crawl about the world."

To have a sensation as of insect creeping over the body; as, the flesh crawls. See Creep, v. i., 7.

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Etymology of 'Crawling'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Crawling" Quotes from Famous Books

... Kitty, speaking up from the hammock, where she swung, half in, half out, watching a colony of ants crawling along the ground underneath. "But I traded my turn to Elise, for her biggest paper ...

— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston

... and a half we crept cautiously along, sometimes crawling on all fours where the country was open, and frequently stopping, while Lizzie went noiselessly forward and reconnoitred, before beckoning to us to advance again. The direction in which she led us lay at the base of the hills, which on one side bounded the little plain and its bay, and ...

— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... fibrous matter, it clutches with its feet at the supporting plane. Then, contracting itself, it draws the scabbard towards it, half-raising it and sometimes even making it assume a vertical position. Even so do the Bulimi move along, lifting their shell as they complete each crawling step. ...

— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... keep company with Pedro," he said. "I'm not as young as I once was, and crawling along that limb some twenty feet above the ground looks some dangerous to legs as old as mine. But I'd like to have one of you, if you find the cave all right, come and let me know," and the sparkle in his eyes told how great was his ...

— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... who had been a prize-fighter before he enlisted in the Second Life Guards, killed no less than seven Frenchmen with his own hand, receiving, however, so many wounds, that on the return of the regiment from its charge he could no longer sit his horse, and crawling behind a house died there ...

— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

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