crawl

«crawl» in Mova's school dictionary: to move on your hands and knees, as babies do — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (crawl, crawls, crawled, crawling); noun (a crawl; the crawl — swimming)

meaning for a pupil

1) To crawl is to move on your hands and knees, as babies do. tree →

2) To crawl is how insects, worms and snakes move along the ground slowly. tree →

3) To crawl means to go very slowly, like traffic in a jam. tree →

4) To be crawling with something means to be full of crawling creatures or people. tree →

5) The crawl, or front crawl, is a fast swimming stroke with arms going over the head one at a time. tree →

sense in the lessons

In fire safety lessons: if there is smoke, get down low and crawl to the exit, because smoke rises and the cleaner air is near the floor. In science, many minibeasts crawl. In swimming lessons, front crawl (freestyle) is the first stroke many children learn. In stories, «time crawled» means time seemed to pass very slowly. Phrases: «crawl along», «crawl under», «front crawl», «crawling with ants», «at a crawl».

examples

• The baby is learning to crawl. tree →
• If there's smoke, crawl low under it to get out. tree →
• A caterpillar crawled across the leaf. tree →
• Traffic crawled along the motorway. tree →
• The kitchen was crawling with ants. tree →
• I can swim fifty metres of front crawl. tree →
• We crawled through the tunnel in the playground. tree →
• The last lesson before the holidays crawled by. tree →
• The place is crawling with them,” said he. tree →

note

Regular verb: crawled. Do not confuse with «creep» (move slowly and quietly) or «claw». «Front crawl» in the UK and Australia is often called «freestyle» in the USA.

In the corpora

• The octopus's body heart stops while it swims, so swimming tires it quickly, and octopuses mostly crawl over the rocks instead.
• Mice do not crawl up elephant trunks; the trunk's strong muscles could blow anything out with a huge snort.
• Bright beach lights confuse turtle hatchlings, which crawl towards the lights instead of the moonlit sea.
• Bright lights at night confuse moths and migrating birds, and baby sea turtles crawl towards lights instead of towards the sea.
• The cleanest air is near the floor, which is why you get low and crawl under the smoke.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «crawl» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.