crawl
verb /krɔːl/
/krɔːl/
Verb Forms
Idioms Phrasal Verbs| present simple I / you / we / they crawl | /krɔːl/ /krɔːl/ |
| he / she / it crawls | /krɔːlz/ /krɔːlz/ |
| past simple crawled | /krɔːld/ /krɔːld/ |
| past participle crawled | /krɔːld/ /krɔːld/ |
| -ing form crawling | /ˈkrɔːlɪŋ/ /ˈkrɔːlɪŋ/ |
- [intransitive] (+ adv./prep.) to move forward on your hands and knees or with your body close to the ground
- Our baby is just starting to crawl.
- A man was crawling away from the burning wreckage.
- She crawled under the fence.
Extra Examples- As night fell, we managed to crawl back to our lines.
- Has the baby started to crawl yet?
- We spent an hour crawling around on our hands and knees looking for the key.
- She was forced to crawl along through the thickening mist.
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadverb- quickly
- slowly
- about
- …
- manage to
- start to
- across
- along
- into
- …
- crawl on (your) hands and knees
- [intransitive] (+ adv./prep.) when an insect, a spider, etc. crawls, it moves forward on its legs
- There's a spider crawling up your leg.
- [intransitive] (+ adv./prep.) to move forward very slowly
- The traffic was crawling along.
- The weeks crawled by.
Extra Examples- The traffic was crawling as I left the city.
- The taxi crawled to a halt.
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadverb- quickly
- slowly
- about
- …
- manage to
- start to
- across
- along
- into
- …
- crawl on (your) hands and knees
- [intransitive] crawl (to somebody) (informal, disapproving) to be too friendly or helpful to somebody in authority, in a way that is not sincere, especially in order to get an advantage from them
- She's always crawling to the boss.
Word OriginMiddle English: of unknown origin; possibly related to Swedish kravla and Danish kravle.
Idioms
come/crawl out of the woodwork
- (informal, disapproving) if you say that somebody comes/crawls out of the woodwork, you mean that they have suddenly appeared in order to express an opinion or to take advantage of a situation
- When he won the lottery, all sorts of distant relatives came out of the woodwork.
make your skin crawl
- to make you feel afraid or full of horror
- Just the sight of him makes my skin crawl.
