crawl

1. (intransitive) To creep; to move slowly on hands and knees, or by dragging the body along the ground.Examples: "Clutching my wounded side, I crawled back to the trench."; "A VVorm finds vvhat it ſearches after, only by Feeling, as it cravvls from one thing to another. VVhereas a Man, having Eyes, ſees it in a Moment, all before him."; "'Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,' he said. 'The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]'"intransitive

2. (intransitive) To move forward slowly, with frequent stops.Examples: "The rush-hour traffic crawled around the bypass."intransitive

3. (intransitive) To act in a servile manner.Examples: "Don’t come crawling to me with your useless apologies!"; "Our hard-ruled king. Again, there is sprung up. An heretic, an arch one, Cranmer; one. Hath crawled into the favour of the king"Synonyms: kowtow, grovelintransitive

4. (intransitive) Followed by with: see crawl with.intransitive

5. (intransitive) To feel a swarming sensation.Examples: "The horrible sight made my skin crawl."intransitive

6. (intransitive, transitive) To swim using the crawl stroke.Examples: "I think I’ll crawl the next hundred metres."intransitivetransitive