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Crawl   /krɔl/   Listen
Crawl

verb
(past & past part. crawled; pres. part. crawling)
1.
Move slowly; in the case of people or animals with the body near the ground.  Synonym: creep.
2.
Feel as if crawling with insects.
3.
Be full of.
4.
Show submission or fear.  Synonyms: cower, creep, cringe, fawn, grovel.
5.
Swim by doing the crawl.



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"Crawl" Quotes from Famous Books



... squeaking of blocks and the rattle and scrape of rings as foresails were rushed up at peak and throat. Headsails raced into position, and, with the anchors cat-headed; the vessels, with their captains at the wheels or tillers, swung into the wind and began to crawl ahead. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... missy 'bout the fambly confab? 'Cause you done hearn Marse Big Josh 'sputin' with Marse Bob Bucknor at the ball consarnin' the Bucks an' Bucknors ain't no reason whe'fo' you gotta be so bigity. Ain't yo' mammy done tell you, time an' agin, that ain't no flies gonter crawl in a shet mouf? All you had ter do wa' ter go an' give Miss Judy Buck the trinket an' kinder git mo' 'quainted an', little by little, git her ter look at things yo' way. You could er let drop kinder accidental like that she wa' kinfolks 'thout bein' so 'splicit. She done got ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... be soon appreciated would be that of giving milk to children. It is marvellous how soon goats find out children and tempt them to suckle. I have had the milk of my goats, when encamping for the night in African travels, drained dry by small black children, who had not the strength to do more than crawl about, but nevertheless came to some secret understanding with the goats and fed themselves. The records of many nations have legends like that of Romulus and Remus, who are stated to have been suckled by wild beasts. These are surprisingly ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... I ever did with a bear was one night over in Devil's Gulch. A big storm come up just about dark an' I found a sort o' cave to crawl into. A big tree, a Pinus Lamberteeny" (another sly glance at the professor), "had fell alongside o' some rocks an' made a fine dry den. A lot of dry leaves was made into a bed, an' I says to Sunday: 'Reckon we 'll have company before long. Wonder ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... road, and just as they were rounding a turn in the winding valley a heavy sleigh, with a load of wood, came out of the forest and moved slowly along in the track ahead. Gilbert uttered an exclamation of impatience. "Now we shall have to crawl," he said. "Sandy ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... given up all hope, a wave retires and leaves me sprawling like a star-fish on the sand, and I get up and look back and find that I've been swimming for my life in two feet of water. I hop back and dress, and crawl home, where I have to ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... and its companion spark began to move around the tiny sextant, approaching nearer and nearer. Simultaneously, sympathetic, as though actuated by the same power, the hand of the speedometer on the dash began to crawl up and up. They had been all but racing ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... rejoined Harry, "and it's such a jolly night." The better to enjoy the night's beauty, he slackened his pace to a very crawl. ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope

... were you," he spluttered, "until I learned better manners I would dig a hole somewhere, crawl inside it, and pull it in ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey

... revived when grafted. And cuttings which had been transported in the mail for three days grew readily, but they were in good condition when received. The mealy bugs were particularly troublesome upon these grafted plants, for they delighted to crawl under the bandages and suck the juices ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various

... that even in the smallest waves cast aside by the ship formations are different from those of other seas. It is midnight, and we are only 125 miles from Japan. Not a passenger except myself on deck, but I cannot sleep. Vandy would be with me, I know, poor fellow, were he able to crawl, but the storm has settled him for the present. How strange that none feel sufficient interest to stay awake and watch with me! They would be amply repaid. The phosphorescent sea shows forth its wonders ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... in their way of responding to the final trump. The good get out of their tombs with a certain modest gaiety, an alacrity tempered by respect; one of them kneels to pray as soon as he has disinterred himself. You may know the wicked, on the other hand, by their extreme shyness; they crawl out slowly and fearfully; they hang back, and seem to say "Oh, dear!" These elaborate sculptures, full of ingenuous intention and of the reality of early faith, are in a remarkable state of preservation; they bear no superficial ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... the wheels of her triumphal car Old England's genius, rough with many a scar, Dragged in the dust! his arms hang idly round, His flag inverted trails along the ground! Our youth, all liveried o'er with foreign gold, Before her dance: behind her crawl the old! See thronging millions to the Pagod run, And offer country, parent, wife, or son; Hear her black trumpet through the land proclaim That not to be corrupted is the shame. In soldier, Churchman, patriot, man in power, 'Tis avarice all, ambition is no more! See, all our ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... called the amusement of his wife. It was all the same, the monotonous succession of morning and evening, of night and noon and evening again. Possibly the lives of these two persons might have continued to crawl along in the narrow channel they had made for themselves during many years more, if the events which had been so long preparing had been retarded; for Greifenstein was a man of habit in everything, incapable of weariness in the performance of what he considered to be his duty, and Clara's ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... Till fearful he felt for The doubtful Duck Boards No longer beneath him. Then spake Sidni, Steward of Stores: "Now know I well I have come to the Country That men name No Man's;" And with woe his heart Waxed heavy within him For horror of Hun Folk Who crawl ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various

... basis and right out of your own little fat head," Fao sneered, "you have set yourself up as Grand High Chief Mogul, and all the rest of us are to crawl up to you on our bellies ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... fortunate thing for the trio that the train had been unable to get up any great speed since it got into motion again after leaving the signal station. It did little better than crawl into the tunnel, and, seeing that the station at which it was destined to halt, and where the police were waiting the fugitives, was only a short distance beyond, the driver made no effort to hurry. Thus it followed that the drop from the train was a matter ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... two parts of camphorated oil. It is well also to apply a jacket made of sheet cotton over the whole chest. It is essential to keep the room at a temperature of about 70 deg. F. and well ventilated, not permitting babies to crawl on the floor when able to be up, or to pass from a warm to a cold room. Sweet spirit of niter is a serviceable remedy to use at the beginning: five to fifteen drops every two hours in water for a child from one to ten years of age, for the first ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various

... convey you a letter with speed; for the way is made so doubtful, that the right messenger is so much in doubt, that he would not have any letters of any effect sent by any man if he might, for he knows not of these; and to say the truth, the way is not for him to crawl in. But I will make another shift beside, which I trust shall serve the turn till he come, if sales be made before he be ready, which is and shall be as pleaseth God; Who ever preserve your worship, and send us ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt

... for a' I ken; but some men are no' left to theirsel's. There's that puir young chiel Anderson, that was shot i' the lungs an' has scarce been able the last day or twa to crawl to the yett to see his auld mither—he's deeing this afternoon. I went ower to the tombstane that keeps the east wund aff him, an' he said to me, 'Andry, man,' said he, 'I'll no' be able to crawl to see my mither the day. I'll vera likely be deid before she comes. ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne

... branch slowly began to split, and as I made a frantic effort to crawl back, a strange noise from the bushy part of the tree overhead turned my ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... 1915. Stormy weather: the Imogene could hardly crawl out. Have written K. to tell him how day succeeds day, never without incident, but never with achievement; how we are burnt up with longing to get on and how we know that he is as anxious. Yet, as I tell him, we "can't force the pace." How can we? We have ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... gunbearer, and for pious devotion to the Mohammedan faith he was second to none. He was the "Chantecler" of our outfit. Every morning at four o'clock, regardless of the weather, he would crawl out of his tent, drape himself in a white sheet, and cry out his prayers to Mecca. It was his voice that woke the camp, and the immediate answer to his prayers was sometimes quite irreverent, especially from the Wakamba porters, who ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... logs of a hut; then, feeling my way round, discovered the door, and knocked. There came no response, so I knocked louder; then pushed, and the heavy woodwork yielded, groaning. But the darkness within was even darker than the darkness without. The others had contrived to crawl down and join me. Michael struck a wax vesta and held it up, and slowly the room came out of the darkness ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... them with a little grimace. "Thank you, little girl," he said. "Put that heavy baby down. He can crawl around." ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... and there a lagoon, more or less brackish, attracts the birds and hunters. A rough, spotty undergrowth partially conceals the sand. The crouching, hardy, live oaks flourish singly or in thickets—the kind of wood for murderers to crawl among—and here and there the skirts of the forest extend downward from the hills with a floor of turf and long aisles of pine-trees hung with Spaniard's Beard. Through this quaint desert the railway cars drew ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... lady showing her husband, how she has taught little Lizzie to go alone. Lizzie is only fourteen months old, and can walk across the room alone. She does not walk but runs. It is amusing to see her. She will crawl to the side of the room, then stand up, and after balancing herself for a moment, she will run towards her mother. See how delighted they all seem. The father is pleased, to see his little girl walk, for then, he can soon take her out with him in his walks. ...
— The Girl's Cabinet of Instructive and Moral Stories • Uncle Philip

... none of the questions that leaped through his brain. To-morrow some one would find Pierre, or Pierre would crawl down into Churchill. And then there would be the dead man to account for. He shuddered as he returned his revolver into his holster and braced his limbs. It was an unpleasant task, but he knew that it ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood

... had got as far as that with my thoughts, the dull numbness began to leave me, and everything else was driven out of my mind by the thought of my wound; and I got asking myself whether it was going to be very bad, for I thought it was, so getting up a little, I began to crawl along in the shade towards the ruined south end of the palace, nobody seeming to ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn

... him as he was going along, he called out, "My good friend, I can show you a famous treat." "Where's that?" said the wolf. "In such and such a house," said Thumbling, describing his father's house, "you can crawl through the drain into the kitchen, and there you will find cakes, ham, beef, and everything your heart can desire." The wolf did not want to be asked twice; so that very night he went to the house and crawled through the drain into the kitchen, and ate and drank there to his heart's content. ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg

... spite of himself, his impetus carried him. Had there not chanced to be another air hole a few yards below, our hero's career would have ended then and there. The current quickly carried him beneath the ice to this other opening where he managed to seize hold of the ice and to crawl out. ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs

... did not see at the first glance. I was about to pass on when a bee passed me making that peculiar shrill, discordant hum that a bee makes when besmeared with honey. I saw it alight in the partially closed wound and crawl home; then came others and others, little bands and squads of them, heavily freighted with honey from the box. The tree was about twenty inches through and hollow at the butt, or from the axe-mark down. This space the bees had completely filled with honey. With an axe ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... closet softly opened. There was a roofed door-way just underneath it, with an old grapevine trellis running up one side of it. A little dark figure stepped out timidly on the narrow, steep roof, clinging with its hands to keep its balance, and then down upon the trellis, which it began to crawl slowly down. The old wood creaked and groaned and trembled, and the little figure trembled and stood still. If it should give way, and fall crashing ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... with us; but we saw from this that the dog had a great deal more of generous love in its nature than the cat, because it not only found it impossible to live after the death of its master, but it must needs, when it came to die, crawl to his side and rest its head ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... busy watchin' them women that I didn't notice nothin' else 'cept you an' the guard—of course I thought he was tendin' to his biz. When they stopped to talk on the bridge, I begun to crawl along closte to the bridge, an' then—you know how it was all comin' so suddin? When I see the feller go over, an' seen you start to'rds the water, I jest took after the others. Well, sir, 'twas too slick the way they managed. Right alongside ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... mouse of weak-eyed and feeble appearance, he took out of the cage and allowed to crawl over him, stroking it tenderly now and then with ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton

... Downward—a hundred feet—and they collided with the upward-bound skip, to fend off from it and start on again. The air grew colder, more moist. The carbides spluttered and flared. Then a slight bump, and they were at the bottom. Fairchild started to crawl out from the bucket, only to resume his old position as Harry yelled ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... you I see it shining clearer over the heights. We mount, we mount, peak beyond peak. We have enemies enough now, thick as the serpents in tropic forests. Well, let them soil with their impure slaver the hem of our garments. But how they will crawl fangless when Ferdinand—the Elect of the People—makes his solemn entry into Berlin. And at his side, drawn by six white horses, his blonde darling, changed into the first woman of Germany." He, too, though to him the fancy ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... anxious to know what the New York papers would say about the bill; that he had arranged to have synopses of their editorials telegraphed to him; he could not wait for the papers themselves to crawl along down to Washington by a mail train which has never run over a cow since the road was built; for the reason that it has never been able to overtake one. It carries the usual "cow-catcher" in front of the locomotive, but this is mere ostentation. It ought to be attached ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... the keeper, almost as loud as his bell. Silence fell upon the gleeful throng instantly. With downcast faces and slow, reluctant feet the bathers commenced to crawl up the wet steps, tumble over the railings, and trailing little brooks of water behind them, sought the bath-rooms, whence they slowly emerged, some fairly well dressed, but the majority ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... case such an unusual apparition would have scared the laziest of Peasants into prompt resistance. Moreover, a Hut, to my mind, was necessarily a small building, with but a modest portal; and camels are tall bony beasts, not physically able to slink and crawl. How could the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... carcase {p.014} of the animal. In this Tartar-like habiliment I well remember lying upon the floor of the little parlor in the farmhouse, while my grandfather, a venerable old man with white hair, used every excitement to make me try to crawl. I also distinctly remember the late Sir George MacDougal of Makerstoun, father of the present Sir Henry Hay MacDougal, joining in this kindly attempt. He was, God knows how,[25] a relation of ours, and I still recollect ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... rifle, and a plentiful supply of ammunition, a tent, and some fur bedding, a lamp, and other camp fixtures, and a little simple food, are put into the boat, and off we go. Perhaps a gale springs up, and we are forced to make a harbor in some little island; or perhaps it falls calm, and we crawl into one, under oars. It is sure to be alive with ducks and geese and snipe. The shooting is superb. Happen what may, come storm or calm or fine weather, though often wet and cold, and frequently in danger, yet I have a grand time of it. I may be back in a day, two ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... idea that it was ethereal, and not corporeal, and lifting with all the soft and tender handling of first love a venerable toad, which smiled upon her, she placed the interesting animal so that it could crawl up and nestle in her bosom. 'Poor child of dank, of darkness, and of dripping,' exclaimed she, in her flute-like notes, 'who sheltereth thyself under the wet and mouldering wall, so neglected in thy form by thy mother Nature, repose awhile in peace where ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... it is five hundred miles! I'll walk, or crawl if I have to, rather than accept anything from that—that rattlesnake! See, there is a little store. We can lay in some provisions for the trip and it will be loads of fun. It will remind you of your old days ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... a model parsonage, he thought, the plan being formed by himself and 'Kate.' Being advised by his neighbours to purchase oxen, he bought (and christened) four oxen, 'Tug and Lug,' 'Crawl and Haul.' But Tug and Lug took to fainting, Haul and Crawl to lie down in the mud, so he was compelled to sell them, and to purchase ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... finds that theologians have attempted to crawl out of desperate situations in their interpretation of the Old Testament by a method of reading into a passage or extracting out of it ideas altogether foreign to its original intent. This method they call "Allegory." By means of this process they have been able to extract any meaning ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... to crawl to the car, dragging his shattered leg behind him, reckless of the throbs of pain it sent through his nerves. "Ef I kin on'y stan' it till I git ter him!" he moaned. "Burnin' alive's harder nor this." He felt the hot smoke on his face; he heard the snapping and roaring of the fire; he saw ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various

... dead-wood—not by bounds or paces, but with the stealthy tread of a cat—his long red body stretched out to its full extent—the beast more resembled a gigantic caterpillar than a quadruped. I could scarcely detect the movement of his limbs, so closely did the monster crawl; but his great tail, tapering three feet behind him, was seen vibrating from side to side, or at intervals moving with quick jerks—expressive of the enjoyment he was receiving in the contemplation of his prey—for such he deemed ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... extent, and owed its vast extent to a reputation, fairly earned by probity, energy and skill. We do not learn that he figured in any lobby, or formed a member of any ring. Whether he was a Norman or not, he was too much a gentleman, in the best sense of the term, to crawl to opulence by low and petty ways. He left no stain on the escutcheon of a ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... piazza floor was not more than a foot and a half from the ground, and it was filled with all sorts of weeds that flourished without sunshine. Still the little puppy cries were persistently wafted out from some remote corner, and, pulling off his jacket, Rudolph started to crawl in and investigate. It did not seem possible that he could make his way, for the place was not high enough for him even to crawl on his hands and knees, and he had rather to worm himself along on his elbows in quite ...
— Tattine • Ruth Ogden

... under the terrific shock and had hardly begun to right herself before her sides were smashed in by another. At the third she crumpled up and sank with every soul aboard of her. Her next astern and second, the Black Prince, and the Warrior, managed to crawl away under cover of the mist. But both went down; though the battered Black Prince survived to be sunk by German battleships during ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... that. We could hear a gaudy rumpus in the Salient. The civvies were frightened, but they stuck to their homes. Nothing was happening there then, and while nothing is happening it's hard to believe it's going to. After seeing a Zouave crawl by with his tongue hanging out, and his face the colour of a mottled cucumber, I said good-bye to the little girl where I was. It was ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... That is, I haven't met any, but they crawl about me all night, and whenever I see that prophet man he talks of them to me. Yes, he talks of them and nothing else with a sort of cold look in his eyes that makes my back creep. I wish it was over, I do, who shall never see old England again," and he went away, I think to ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... told twice. Seizing the crown, she sprang on to the window, crying: 'Monkey, come to me!' And to a monkey, the climb down the tree into the courtyard did not take half a minute. When she had reached the ground she said again: 'Ant, come to me!' And a little ant at once began to crawl over the high wall. How glad the ant was to be out of the giant's castle, holding fast the crown which had shrunk into almost nothing, as she herself had done, but grew quite big ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various

... said—"the cold-blooded, calculating slave!—But I unmasked him, Janet—I made the snake uncoil all his folds before me, and crawl abroad in his naked deformity; I suspended my resentment, at the danger of suffocating under the effort, until he had let me see the very bottom of a heart more foul than hell's darkest corner.—And thou, Leicester, is it possible thou couldst bid me for a moment ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... bear to let that lady see him crawl clumsily across the floor, as he had to do when he moved without his crutch. It was not because he thought she would make fun of him; perhaps it was because he knew she would not. And yet without his crutch, how else was he to get to that bath? And for no reason ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... their natural healthy hue, have a pale, dejected, and sickly appearance, which is quite distressing to witness. However, the crew of the Spanish schooner look infinitely more wretched; they have little else but their original forms remaining; they crawl about like beings under a curse they are mere shadows or phantoms of men, looking round for their burying place. No spectacle can be more humiliating to man's pride than this; nothing can give him a more degrading sense of his own nothingness. It is very much to be wondered ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... careless of the pot. The girl watched her mother for a moment, wondering how she could think of the stew, not guessing that she turned the spoon without a thought of what she did; then she began to crawl, quickly but noiselessly, up the staircase in the track of Rudolf Rassendyll. She looked back once: the old woman stirred with a monotonous circular movement of her fat arm. Rosa, bent half-double, skimmed upstairs, till she came in sight of the king whom she was so proud to ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... fortunate for Silas that he had been let down several feet thus gradually. He was near the ledge from which he had been lifted, and had just time to grasp it again and crawl upon it, when the man fell, turning a complete somerset over him, fearful to witness! revolving slowly in his swift descent through the air; still holding with tenacious grip the rope; plunging through the boughs like a mere log tumbled from ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... biggest of the three—did not do so much damage. By the time it arrived nearly everybody was in the rigging. On deck perhaps a dozen gasping, half-drowned, and half-stunned wretches were rolling about or attempting to crawl into safety. They went by the board, as did the wreckage of the two remaining boats. The other pearl buyers and myself, between seas, managed to get about fifteen women and children into the cabin, and battened down. Little good it did the ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... he went with a scream, and I heard no more of him. But I needn't dwell on the horrors of that night; you had a strong taste of them yourself. About daybreak I was flung like a spent ball on to a sandy beach. I had just strength to crawl a few yards further up, and then collapsed. It seems some Indians carried me away, and nursed me back to health, but for weeks I was wild as a loon. They searched the coast, but found nothing, and I concluded you ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... living beings have conveyed and received ideas, there has been language, whether looks or gestures or words spoken or written have been the vehicle by means of which the ideas have travelled. Some ideas crawl, some run, some fly; and in this case words are the wings they fly with, but they are only the wings of thought or of ideas, they are not the thought or ideas themselves, nor yet, as Professor Max Muller would have it, inseparably connected with them. Last summer I was ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... had been virtually bedridden. During the first meal she had at my house her sister sat by her couch because she must not be left alone. By the second meal the sister had gone, and Miss L. ate at the table with the other guests. That night she managed to crawl upstairs, with a good deal of assistance and with great terror at the probable results of such an effort. After that, she walked up-stairs alone whenever she had occasion to go to her room. Her heart will always be a little rapid and her body will never be very strong, but she ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... miles, when night closed in again. His feet were sore, and his legs so weak that they trembled beneath him. Another night passed in the bleak damp air, made him worse; when he set forward on his journey next morning he could hardly crawl along. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... go up and up, to fall Through twilight to the sleepless dusk again, Like tortured flies upon a window pane. Wingless or broken-winged, They crawl and crawl ... Meaningless, striving—nowhere after all, Till one is tired of heeding. Tired. A stain of drab unloveliness the days remain Unmoving now, save that across the wall, A patch of sun behind a shadow ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... should reconsider. Maybe he'll slash a killing crawl-stroke at me before I've really started. Tell me ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... night, Whitney groaning and mumbling horribly, when suddenly my horse gave a little snicker—low, the way they do when you give them grain—and I felt his tired body straighten up ever so little. 'Maybe,' I thought, and I looked up. But I didn't much care; I just wanted to crawl into some cool place and forget all about it and die. It was late in the afternoon. My shadow was lengthening. Too late, really, for much mirage; but I no longer put great stock in green vegetation and matters ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... I couldn't. I would have given half my interest in the hereafter to have been able to crawl under the table or to have run away. But fright held its sway, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... handy, we made up our minds we'd make a smugglers' cave. We got to work lively; and while some of the fellows were digging out the bank, others chopped down small trees and bushes, and made a covered archway to crawl under, so that the opening of the cave couldn't be seen. We pulled the young twigs and vines down over the chopped ones, rolled logs inside for seats, and things ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... be thought of," Jerry said. "It seems to me our best chance would be to leave the critters behind, and to crawl out the moment it gets dark, and try and get ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... let down," Scaife said, "and during the first school the maids make them, and shut them up again. It is considered a joke to crawl into another fellow's room at night, and shut him up. You find yourself standing upon your head in the dark, choking. It is a joke—for the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... pestered the section boss until he'd got him to build a little square coop for him, there by the crossin'—a place where he could crawl in between trains, smoke his pipe, and toast himself over a sheet-iron stove about as ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... was missing. Without him we could not start on our journey. The whistling was continued for fully forty minutes without any answer. Finally, the longed-for gentleman was seen emerging unsteadily from the local gin-shop with no sign of haste. He managed to crawl on board and we were off, amid much ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... sings over to where Grief's layin' all quiled up same as a water-moccasin snake, an' the rain peltin' into him like etarnal wrath; 'wake up thar an' crawl for cover!' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... was in a dying state when the boat was driven on the reef, and Jack could not tell how he had managed to reach the shore. He found himself at last in the very bay where we had landed. He had just strength enough to crawl up to the palm-grove, where he found some cocoanuts on the ground, and managing to eat one of ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... cats! Frightened 'em outen their slippers! Oh, jiminy! Never, never, NEVER before was they so skeert! Never since school kept did they have to crawl like that! They was skeert enough FIRST when you come, but just now!—Lordy! They wasn't a-goin' to let you see me—but they had to! had to! HAD TO!" and she emphasized each repetition with ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... there's his choice, He would live, like a lamp, to the last wink, And crawl the utmost verge of life. O Hercules! Why should a man like this, Who dares not trust his fate for one great action, Be all the care of Heaven? Why should he lord it O'er fourscore thousand men, of whom each ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... some point the climber had in view. Steeper and steeper the way had grown. The prints on the rocky mountain-side, from being those of feet only, merged into those made by hands. The man had begun to crawl, making his way inch by inch. Fragments of his torn clothing hung on the points of rocks. Dim brown lines showed the path his body had taken, as he sometimes slipped back. Breaks in the scant vegetation told where his fingers ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge

... the weakness. The fever, it keeps me down all one day, as may be to-day; then the morrow I be quite prostrate with the weakness it leaves; and the third day I be, so to speak, well. But I can't do a full day's work, sir; no, nor hardly half of a one, and by evening I be so done over I can scarce crawl to my place here. It ain't much, sir, part of a day's work in three; but I be thankful for that improvement. A week ago, I couldn't ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... a world of curious things, Where those who crawl, and those that have wings, Are ranked in the classes of beggars, and kings, No matter how much the worth May be on the side of those who creep, Where the vain, the light, and the bold will sweep, Others from notice, and proudly keep ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Medusa tossed ashore by a wave, finds itself so out of correspondence with its new surroundings that its life must pay the forfeit. Had it been able by internal change to adapt itself to external change—to correspond sufficiently with the new environment, as for example to crawl, as an eel would have done, back into that environment with which it had completer correspondence—its life might have been spared. But had this happened it would continue to live henceforth only ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... a barren scene, and wild, Where naked cliffs were rudely piled; But ever and anon between Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green; And well the lonely infant knew Recesses where the wallflower grew, And honeysuckle loved to crawl Up the low crag and ruined wall. I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade The sun in all its round surveyed; And still I thought that shattered tower The mightiest work of human power; And marvelled as the aged hind ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... of the general cleaning and reconstruction areas was a pitiful assemblage of cripples which had had enough energy to crawl back, but which did not attempt, or were not allowed, to enter the nest proper. Some had one or two legs gone, others had lost an antenna or had an injured body. They seemed not to know what to do—wandering ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... pine and oak and ash and hickory and maple trees. They make a pleasant shade and the little birds love to swing to and fro and sing sweetly up in the trees. Rabbits hop and squirrels run and ugly snakes do crawl in the woods. Geraniums and roses jasamines and japonicas are cultivated flowers. I help mother and teacher water ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... long time before we can crawl out of the shadow of that dark inheritance; but there are signs in the world of an awakening brotherliness; and perhaps we may some day come back to the old truth, so long mishandled, that the essence of all religion is a spirit of beauty and of joy, bent on giving rather than receiving; and ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... o' the sea. There mus' be a wonderful steep slant t' some o' them pans when the big seas slips beneath them. Yet a man could go warily an' maybe keep from slidin' off. If the worst comes t' the worst, he could dig his toes an' nails in an' crawl. 'Tis not plain from here if them pans is touchin' each other all the way across; but it looks that way—I 'low they is touchin', with maybe a few small gaps that a man could get round somehow. Anyhow, 'tis not quite certain that a man ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... course taken by their expected prey. Much valuable time had thus been gained by the pursued, time which they needed sadly enough, for, despite their frantic rowing, their unwieldy craft would barely crawl ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... this, and had detached seven of his men to crawl round and post themselves at the back of the huts amidst ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... fool!" She swooped down on her like a hawk. "An ungrateful fool! What's in your mind? Can you imagine that I'd compromise you, in any way, in the smallest degree. Why, he shall crawl on his knees to ask you, he must be dying of happiness, that's how it shall be arranged. Why, you know that I'd never let you suffer. Or do you suppose he'll take you for the sake of that eight thousand, and that I'm hurrying off to sell you? You're a fool, a fool! You're ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... of it," said the barmaid. "They mostly does," said the potboy, not without some feeling of pride in the immunities of his sex. "Here he is," said Hugh, as he entered the parlour. "My boy, there's papa." The child at this time was more than a year old, and could crawl about and use his own legs with the assistance of a finger to his little hand, and could utter a sound which the fond mother interpreted to mean papa; for with all her hot anger against her husband, the mother was above all things anxious that her child should be taught to love his father's ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... it!" Three men seated on a plum jam box during a terrific bombardment. Trees are falling, buildings crumbling, the landscape heaving, and Bert says, "Alf—we'll miss this old war wen it's over!" As the shells strike nearer and nearer and a great crater yawns at their feet they crawl into it, are all but buried alive by the dirt from another shell, and Bert exclaims, "Say, Alf, scare me—I got the 'iccoughs!" And so it goes for a whole evening, while Bert, making love to an interminable string of girls at each place where he is billeted at ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... forward, and having fearlessly removed the stops from the jib, which required her to crawl out a little way on the bowsprit, she hoisted the sail, and carried the sheet aft to the standing-room, as she had often seen the boatmen do. The effect of this additional canvas was immediately seen, ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic

... big hillock of moss, and crawl into the middle of it, but Brunie preferred a cave; it was warmer, more private, and not so likely to be discovered, for she was looking forward to an important domestic event, ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin

... room while we were speaking and clutched me by the legs. I do not think it was fear of the bullets which made him crawl. He had been so very sick that he ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... evinced so naturally his joy at having hit the wild beast, that a tempest of applause burst from every quarter of the house. Then, throwing away his bow, he drew a dagger from his girdle, took it between his teeth, and began to crawl forward on hands and knees, as though he meant to surprise the wounded panther in his den. To render the illusion perfect, Death, again excited by Goliath, who struck him with an iron bar, sent forth frightful howlings from ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... wish I were a mat for you to walk on. I want to crawl on my hands and knees for you. I'll never leave ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... to be spent in places like Seelisberg and Muerren, at the edge of precipices, in front of mountains, or above a lake. The cloud-masses crawl and tumble about the valleys like a brood of dragons; now creeping along the ledges of the rock with sinuous self-adjustment to its turns and twists; now launching out into the deep, repelled by battling winds, or ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... angrily retorted Roland. "He'd crawl here on all fours, but what he'd come; only she won't let him. She knows it too. She said this morning that he'd come when he was in his coffin! I should like ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... and out between trucks and automobiles, ambulances and artillery caissons, horse-wagons and mule-wagons, achieving again and again those hair's-breadth escapes which are the joy in life of every normal motor-cyclist. Now and then, when things were too slow, they would try a crawl in the ditches, or push their machines over the ploughed fields. So it happened that Jimmie found himself competing with his red-headed Irish enemy; there was a narrow opening between two stalled vehicles, ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... inside, and compelled him to tell where he should find the bones of his brother. Then for a reward he painted the Snake green, and declared that as he had served both sides, he should crawl upon his ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman

... that you are the lucky one. I am going to leave you here with the rifle and I shall crawl back a little way. If we went on he would jump away on the other side of the alders and that would be the last of him. I am going off to the right, and then I will walk slowly towards him. The river is shallow ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... found among the rocks an opening to a new cave. The Jura mountains are riddled with caves which the stalactites turn into palaces and castles. The entrance was rather small, and they made no attempt to crawl in, for they knew that coming out again was often very difficult. But there was great excitement about it, and while Monkey kept repeating that she knew it already, or else had seen a picture of it somewhere, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... like wands, as they all but lifted the gig clean out of the water at every stroke. We tore along over the low, oil-like ridges of the swell at the speed of the dolphin, leaving the schooner as though she were at anchor; yet to my eager impatience our headlong pace seemed to be little better than a crawl, for the light wreaths of smoke that I had seen winding lazily upward from the ship's hull and twining about her spars increased in volume with startling rapidity, while it momentarily grew darker in colour, until, within ten minutes of its first appearance, it ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood

... been disabled by the electric guns revived, and were able to crawl away, but they were too weak to ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... varmint's pretty slick, but I never should ha' thought of her crawling over ninety miles in four hours:"—it was at this time about midnight. "You ask me what I'd do; why now I'll tell you, if I was you, I'd say, Mat. here take the stick,—it wouldn't be the first time,—and I'd crawl out o' that hole and shake myself; and then I'd ask this gentleman for a cigar and a mouthful of liquor, and then I'd clap a bit o' the square mainsail on her, and lift the sloppy little slut out of it a yard or two; ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... was happy and maintained the attitude of a guitar-player, thrumming the calf of the useless leg to accompany tuneful thoughts, but the inevitable lapse and slide of the foot recurred, and the philosopher was exhibited as an infant learning to crawl. The seat, moreover, not having been fashioned for him or for any soft purpose, resisted his pressure and became a thing of violence, that required to be humiliatingly coaxed. His last resource to propitiate it was counselled by nature turned mathematician: tenacious ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Give them the least little bit of a chance and they will be out of the way before you can see them. A gorged snake—that is one that has just taken a full meal—may be sluggish but in a majority of cases he will crawl away and hide in some secure place till the process of digestion is over. Do not go near a tub if you are afraid of water for you can get drowned in it about as easy as you can get bitten by a snake in the woods and to wind up the subject, not one-tenth of the ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... of the river was speedily lashed into angry waves; the rain came down in torrents, and although the left-hand bank was but a quarter of a mile distant it was soon lost to view. Frank was glad to leave the deck and crawl into the little cabin, and sit down to a hot meal which the negro cook ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... a woodsman, as long as you're so finicky, either," Ethan warned him. "'The happy-go-lucky kind is best in the end. They give their blanket a fling, and just crawl under. And ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... her out on to the platform like a blind woman, and so got her into the fly. The half-hour crawl to Holmescroft was the most racking experience of the day. M'Leod had obeyed my instructions. There was no one visible in the house or the gardens; and ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... he was fulfilling the Jewish religion. But it is clearer still that we ought to be tolerant of one another, because we are all weak, inconsistent, liable to fickleness and error. Shall a reed laid low in the mud by the wind say to a fellow reed fallen in the opposite direction: "Crawl as I crawl, wretch, or I shall petition that you be torn up by the roots ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... France. Discord demented bursts the bounds of Dis; Mad Murder raves and Horror holds her hell. Hades up-heaves her whelps. In human forms Up-flare the Furies, serpent-haired and grin Horrid with bloody jaws. Scaled reptiles crawl From slum and sewer, slimy, coil on coil— Danton, dark beast, that builded for himself A monument of quicksand limed with blood; Horse-leech Marat, blear-eyed, vile vulture born; Fair Charlotte's ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... inch or two. Enraged and desperate, she sprang upon the dogs, who, emboldened by the presence of their masters, came too close. With one of her enormous paws she came down on old Beaver, making a large wound in his side, which nearly killed him. He was hardly able to crawl ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... about that man, Mag. He knows he can't get bookings for any play on earth; that if he did they'd be canceled and any old excuse thrown at him, as soon as Tausig heard of it and could put on the screws. He knows that there isn't an unwatched hole in theatrical America through which he can crawl and pull me and the play in after him. And yet he just can't let go working on it. He loves it, Mag; he loves it as Molly loved that child of hers that kept her nursing it all the years of its life, and left her feeling that the world had been robbed of everything ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... Old Clothes Man couldn't smoke it at all, although he tried the best he could, and pretty soon it began to rain and the chocolate became soft and sticky, and the little Bunny all wet, so he said: "I guess I'll crawl into a hollow stump if ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory

... did next day; but, ah, The kid proved very lazy! And it moved toward home so slowly She could scarcely see it crawl; At first she coaxed and petted it, And then she stormed and scolded, Till at last, when they had reached the bridge, It would ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates

... hands and his feet he can run, jump, and crawl, He can dance, walk, or caper, or play with his ball; Take your hoop or your cart, and have a good race, And that will soon give you a fine ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... vacated by preceding victims and festering with their fever. Here they lay as closely to each other as if crowded side by side on the bottom of one grave. Six persons had been found in this fetid sepulchre at one time, and with one only able to crawl to the door to ask for water. Removing a board from the entrance of this black hole of pestilence, we found it crammed with wan victims of famine, ready and willing to perish. A quiet listless despair broods over the population, and ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt

... and that opening is big enough to let a panther creep through, or a wild-cat! I'd like to crawl through there and make sure where it comes out and if it is quite safe on the other side," suggested ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... mind. But I won't have the other lasses married before me. And rather than that any one of them should get thee, I'll free thee from the mountains. Mark me, now! When the sun is hot and high the old man will get frightened and crawl into his corner. Then look to thyself. Shove hard against the door of the hayloft, and hasten to get thee over the fence, and thou ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... them; but we must do it properly. We'll have a court-martial upon them, and teach the spies to crawl ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... and have been freezing nearly every day, but scorn the apparel of the weak white man. The Amazons refuse to wear shoes. When it is too chilly for them to gallop around inside the bark fence they crawl into their tents, roll themselves up in the black blankets and criticise the policy of ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... but if on the chase the wearer finds his upper garment oppressively warm, he tosses it away, and trusts to finding or stealing another when he needs it. Their dwellings are wretched little huts, or rather sheds, composed of bark or dried leaves, and so low-pitched that one must crawl on his knees to enter them. They are ill-ventilated and filthy in the extreme, utterly devoid of furniture and household implements, and without any means of securing either privacy or warmth—places where we should ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... peace," replied Veitel, in feverish anxiety. "You are not to persuade your father to his harm. There is no helping this baron; he is a fly who has burned his wings in the candle; he can only crawl. And even if Ehrenthal be fool enough to follow your evil counsel, he can not maintain for the baron possession of his estate. If he does not eject him, another will. I have no interest in saying this to you," continued he, uneasily listening to a sound in front of the house; "I do so ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... not likely to live more than five or six years longer. I am nearly seventy-three, and far from strong, even considering my age. The other evening I thought I was going to die, and could hardly manage to crawl ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... and onions are the larvae of flies similar in appearance to house-flies but a little smaller. When the plants are young, the flies lay their white eggs on the stem close to the ground. When the eggs hatch, the larvae crawl down under the ground and cause the plants to decay. The wilting of the leaves is the first sign of the trouble. Prevention is better than cure in this case. Dust some dry white hellebore along the rows of onions or radishes and around the cabbage plants; or, for radishes, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education



Words linked to "Crawl" :   feel, bend, swarm, swim, formicate, swimming stroke, crawl in, locomotion, flex, water sport, aquatics, pullulate, teem, go, movement, locomote, move, travel, motion, flutter kick



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