grovels

verb

present tense third-person singular of grovel
1
as in cringes
to draw back or crouch down in fearful submission the way in which the abused dog would grovel whenever its owner came near

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance
2
as in crawls
to move slowly with the body close to the ground because of their anatomy, bats can only grovel while moving along the ground

Synonyms & Similar Words

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for grovels
  1. cringes
  2. crawls
  3. flinches
  4. creeps
  5. cowers
  6. snakes
  7. slides
Verb
  • Payton cringes at the mention of a sophomore slump, that defenses will figure out Nix.
    — Troy Renck, Denver Post, 6 Aug. 2025
Definition of cringes
Verb
  • Seltz’s system crawls hundreds of millions of pages a day, and returns results in under 200 milliseconds.
    — Jeremy Kahn, Fortune, 24 June 2026
  • At sunset, the city starts glowing around you while traffic crawls silently below.
    — Abby Montanez, Robb Report, 28 May 2026
Definition of crawls
Verb
  • Advertisement Throughout the narrative, Johnson never flinches in his portrayal of the wreck, unleashing footage of investigators approaching the car and the victims’ families.
    — Jake King-Schreifels, Time, 15 May 2026
  • DiVincenzo never flinches at adversity.
    — Marcus Thompson II, New York Times, 26 Apr. 2026
Definition of flinches
Verb
  • Misalignment creeps in simply because a high volume of choices are handed off to local leaders operating under distinct market pressures.
    — Peter Ross, Forbes.com, 25 June 2026
  • As our conversation extends into the hour mark, her hood creeps upward along the side of her face most visible to those around us.
    — José Criales-Unzueta, Vanity Fair, 23 June 2026
Definition of creeps
Verb
  • Anaia, feeling jilted that the letter was addressed only to Racine, cowers in hurt, like a street cat.
    — Doreen St. Félix, New Yorker, 1 June 2026
  • As his party watches silently and cowers, his intentions grow only more naked.
    — Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic, 19 May 2026
Definition of cowers
Verb
  • The New River, which snakes through West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina, may be one of the oldest river systems on earth.
    — Josh Laskin, Travel + Leisure, 3 July 2026
  • Morning mist coated the nearby Rhone River that snakes through the Alpine valley as worshippers flocked in.
    — ABC News, ABC News, 1 July 2026
Definition of snakes
Verb
  • The kibble is out of sight, the bowls are lined up, the drawer slides shut.
    — Ryan Brennan, Sacbee.com, 9 July 2026
  • The final manual adjustment is the headrest, which slides vertically with firm clicks and tilts smoothly up and down.
    — Will Greenwald, PC Magazine, 9 July 2026
Definition of slides
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

groveling
grovels
groves
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Grovels.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/grovels. Accessed 21 Jul. 2026.

Copy Citation

More from Merriam-Webster on grovels

Nglish: Translation of grovels for Spanish Speakers

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
Love words? Need even more definitions?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

More from Merriam-Webster

Word of the Day

Listen to the pronunciation of dog days

See Definitions and Examples »

Popular in Grammar & Usage

See More

Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate

'A' or 'an'? What about before 'h'? An Indefinite Article Guide

Do you 'say your piece' or 'say your peace'?

Why is '-ed' sometimes pronounced at the end of a word?

Commonly Misspelled Words
See More

Popular in Wordplay

See More

14 Phobias You Probably Haven't Heard Of

It's a Scorcher! Words for the Summer Heat

The Longest Long Words List

Ten Words Ending with a Silent ‘T’

Why do we say 'fly off the handle'?
See More

Popular

See More

Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate

14 Phobias You Probably Haven't Heard Of

It's a Scorcher! Words for the Summer Heat
See More

Games & Quizzes

See All
Play Quordle: Guess all four words in a limited number of tries. Each of your guesses must be a real 5-letter word.
Quordle Can you solve 4 words at once?
Play Blossom: Solve today's spelling word game by finding as many words as you can using just 7 letters. Longer words score more points.
Blossom Pick the best words!
Play Missing Letter: a crossword with a twist. Each of the 25 puzzle words start with a different letter of the alphabet. Which letter is missing?
The Missing Letter A daily crossword with a twist
child-detective
Spot the Misspelled Word July 2026 Those little red underlines can't help you now...
See All