crawl

noun

plural crawls

1

a

: the act or action of crawling

A child's early developmental stages, be it their first crawl or their first step, is something parents eagerly anticipate and cherish.

—Malvika Hemanth

b

: slow or laborious progress

Traffic slowed to a crawl.

It [Hurricane Ian] swamped city streets with water and smashed trees along the coast while moving at a crawl that threatened catastrophic flooding across a wide area.

—Mark Heim

c

chiefly British : the visiting of various pubs in succession especially as a social activity

… tourists have also recently been reported doing a crawl around the London pubs where Karl Marx allegedly used to get drunk.

—Jeremy Atiyah

see also bar crawl, pub crawl

d

: a themed event that involves visiting multiple establishments of a similar kind in succession

A shuttle will run throughout the day to take visitors to the various locations on the art crawl and visit the 15 vendors who've created works for the shopping event.

—Sarah Colburn

In New Jersey, there's no shortage of experiential tourism for foodies, from food crawls in Jersey City to … farms in Hunterdon County …

—Kimberly Redmond

A lit crawl is like a pub crawl, except (perhaps) you won't have a headache the next day. You will, however, wake up to find your head stuffed with glorious words and (perhaps) to see a new stack of books on your bedside table.

—Laurie Hertzel

2

or crawl stroke plural crawl strokes : a fast swimming stroke executed in a prone position with alternating overarm strokes and a flutter kick

She did the crawl with her head above the water …

—Cathrin Bradbury

… slicing through the water with a powerful crawl stroke …

—Elizabeth Shepherd

called also freestyle

3

: lettering that moves vertically or horizontally across an electronic display (as of a television or computer monitor) or movie screen to give information (such as performer credits or news bulletins)

… the opening crawl, the sprawling wall of slowly scrolling text that crept up from the bottom of the screen …

—Dan Casey

The message was displayed as a news crawl on … computers, and text messages were sent to visitors.

—Molly Walsh

Examples of crawl in a Sentence

Near the construction site, traffic had slowed to a crawl.

The bus was moving along at a crawl.

Her strongest stroke is the crawl.

Recent Examples on the Web

Be sure to cover your head and neck with your arms, and crawl under a sturdy table if possible. —Ca Earthquake Bot, Sacbee.com, 6 June 2026

But Russian battlefield progress has slowed to a crawl while Russian casualties are reportedly mounting at an exponential rate, analysts say. —David Brennan, ABC News, 4 June 2026

Haslam received permission to speak with MacFarland, who had one more year left on his contract with the Avalanche, shortly after Vegas swept Colorado out of the Western Conference Final, and the process went from a slow crawl to hyperspeed. —Corey Masisak, Denver Post, 3 June 2026

Suddenly, the airport wait does not have to mean sitting shoulder to shoulder at the gate, guarding your bag and watching the minutes crawl by. —Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 30 May 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1817, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

Phrases Containing crawl

• bar crawl
• come/crawl out of the woodwork
• crawl space
• crawl to a stop/standstill
• make someone's flesh crawl/creep
• make someone's skin crawl/creep
• make someone's skin/flesh crawl
• pub crawl

Rhymes for crawl

• ahl
• all
• aul
• bawl
• brawl
• call
• caul
• dol
• doll
• drawl
• fall
• gall

Kids Definition

crawl

1 of 2 verb

ˈkrȯl 

1

: to move slowly with the body close to the ground : move on hands and knees

2

: to move along slowly

the bus crawled along

3

: to be covered with or have the feeling of being covered with creeping things

the floor was crawling with ants

crawler noun

crawl

2 of 2 noun

1

: the act or motion of crawling

2

: a swimming stroke performed facedown in the water and using overarm strokes and rapid alternating kicks