| 释义 |
crawler|ˈkrɔːlə(r)|
[f. crawl v.1 + -er1.]
1. a. One who or that which crawls; a crawling creature, a reptile, etc.
1649Lovelace Lucasta 140 Unarm'd of wings..Unhappy Crawler on the Land. 1755Young Centaur vi. Wks. 1757 IV. 247 Thou child of the dust..Thou crawler on earth. 1820Byron Mar. Fal. v. i. 462 The man who dies by the adder's fang May have the crawler crush'd. 1836W. Irving Astoria I. 256 Ignorant crawlers upon earth.
b. spec. A louse. ? Obs. Cf. creeper.
1795Wolcott (P. Pindar) Lousiad ii. Wks. 1812, I. 236 That we, your Cooks, are such a nasty crew..as to have Crawlers in our heads. 1825Knapp & Baldw. Newgate Cal. IV. 27/2 Crawlers were found in his wounds.
c. One who swims the crawl-stroke. ? Obs.
1912F. Sachs Complete Swimmer 149 The majority of crawlers will complete one length of a bath—usually about 30 yards—without breathing at all.
2. colloq. A cab moving slowly along the streets in search of a fare.
1865G. Meredith R. Fleming x, Seeing that London cabs—crawlers..could when paid for it, do their business like lightning. 1871Daily News 14 Aug., To amend the Hackney Carriage Act, in order to prevent what are called ‘crawlers’ plying along the streets.
3. fig.
a. One who acts in a mean or servile way;
b. A lazy person, loiterer.
1847‘A. Harris’ Settlers & Convicts i. 6 It [sc. the sight of Sydney from the harbour] gives, even from the distance, a presage of the stirring, downright earnest life..that so strongly characterizes the race that lives, and breathes, and strives around: a race with whom it is one of the worst reproaches to be a crawler. 1856G. H. Boker Poems (1857) II. 104 That scheming crawler. 1880Silver's Handbk. Australia 289 Crawlers are not wanted, and will soon discover that they are in the way. 1900H. Lawson Over Sliprails in Prose Wks. (1948) 261 The rest were crawlers, mostly pub spielers and bush larrikins. 1912R. B. Booth Five Yrs. N.Z. vii. 39 A rough lot of characters were..seen there..the wretched debauched crawler, the villainous-looking ‘lag’. c1926‘Mixer’ Transport Workers' Songbk. 82 Who is dinkum, who's a crawler? 1934Bulletin (Sydney) 21 Mar. 40/3, I promised myself that if ever I met the crawler I'd flay him alive. 1957‘N. Culotta’ Weird Mob (1958) xiii. 203 Don't overdo the generosity. That will make you a ‘crawler’ which is nearly as bad as being a bludger.
4. A domesticated animal of slow movements. Austral.
1853C. B. Hall in T. F. Bride Lett. Vict. Pioneers (1898) 218 On this run, out of 1,500 head of cattle, all had been driven off but about 30 ‘crawlers’. 1890‘R. Boldrewood’ Col. Reformer xviii, The herd..consisted almost wholly of the well-bred station ‘crawlers’, as the stockmen term them from their peaceable and orderly habits. 1941Baker Dict. Austral. Slang 20 Crawler,..a cow, calf or bullock of peacable [sic] habits.
5. Chiefly pl. An overall garment put on a child in order that it can crawl and still keep its ordinary clothes clean.
1891Cassell's Family Mag. 340/2 A child's quilt or ‘crawler’ is a useful nursery appendage. 1923Daily Mail 11 Jan. 4 Children's Crawlers. 1923Weekly Dispatch 18 Feb. 15 A new style of crawler has just been designed. 1924A. Huxley Little Mexican 202 A little toddling creature in blue crawlers. 1937M. Allingham Dancers in Mourning xiii. 171 You were in crawlers when I was kicking my heels about.
6. In full crawler tractor. A kind of tractor moving on an endless chain; also ellipt. So crawler track.
1922Encycl. Brit. XXXII. 739/1 The crawler type..can pass over marshy land where the wheeled tractor would be mired. 1926Ibid. Suppl. III. 796/1 The crawler tractor had one or two continuous-chain tracks on which it ran and which it carried with it. 1936Forestry X. 88 The modern track-laying or ‘Crawler’ tractor with its great flexibility and speed is replacing horse-dragging. 1954Highway Engin. Terms (B.S.I.) 45 Crawler track, a device, consisting of an endless chain of plates which bear upon the ground, used in place of wheels on vehicles or equipment intended for traversing soft or natural ground. 1955‘N. Shute’ Requiem for Wren 6 There were now four big diesel tractors on the place, one of them a crawler. 1959Times Rev. Industry June 75/1 Largest single shipment of..crawler tractors since production began. 1962Flight Internat. LXXXII. 209/1 The use of a 2,500 ton crawler vehicle to carry each Saturn..from assembly building to launch pad. Ibid., All other launch equipment..will be transported to the pad by the crawler. 1968New Scientist 26 Dec. 714/1 The problem of operating mounted ploughs appeared to be insuperable—one reason for the diminishing popularity of the crawler.
▸ Computing. = spider n.
1994Re: Q: FORMS, is there a Guide/Reference? in comp.infosystems.www.misc (Usenet newsgroup) 16 Sept. Alternatively you can start and search the web with some spider, crawler or other search engine. 1995Network Observer (Electronic text) Aug. Could Web client producers create their own crawlers that search for features that are specific to their competitors' clients? 2001Teacher Librarian (Nexis) 1 Oct. 20 Creators of porn sites place misleading text like ‘pokemon’ or ‘pokeman’ on their pages to trick search engine crawlers into thinking they are relevant.., pushing these sites to the top of the hit list. |