American Heritage Dictionary Entry: crawl HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key. Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window. guide to the dictionary THE USAGE PANEL The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions. The Panelists NEED HELP SOLVING A CROSSWORD PUZZLE? Go to our Crossword Puzzle Solver and type in the letters that you know, and the Solver will produce a list of possible solutions. -- AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android. THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more. OPEN DICTIONARY PROJECT Share your ideas for new words and new meanings of old words! Start Sharing Now! -- See word lists from the best-selling 100 Words Series! Find out more! INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES? Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com crawl 1 (krôl) Share: Tweet intr.v. crawled, crawl·ing, crawls 1. To move slowly on the hands and knees or by dragging the body along the ground; creep: The baby crawled across the floor. 2. To advance slowly, feebly, laboriously, or with frequent stops: We crawled along in traffic until we reached the highway. 3. To proceed or act servilely: "She was going to come crawling back to me, eloquently detailing exactly how sorry she was" (Emily Griffin). 4. To be or feel as if swarming or covered with moving things: The accident scene was crawling with police officers. My flesh crawled in horror. 5. To swim the crawl. n. 1. The action of moving slowly on the hands or knees or dragging the body along the ground. 2. An extremely slow pace: Traffic was moving at a crawl. 3. Sports A rapid swimming stroke consisting of alternating overarm strokes and a flutter kick. 4. A set of letters or figures that move across, up, or down a movie or television screen, usually giving information, such as film credits or weather alerts. Also called crawler. 5. A social activity that consists of going to a series of related establishments one after the other: a bar crawl; a museum crawl. [Middle English craulen, from Old Norse krafla; see gerbh- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.] crawling·ly adv. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. crawl 2 (krôl) Share: Tweet n. Archaic A pen in shallow water, as for confining fish or turtles. [Afrikaans kraal, enclosure for animals; see KRAAL.] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices: Indo-European Roots Semitic Roots The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. 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