MW→natch

natch

EnglishMerriam-Webster Dictionary

ense 1a'> 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

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

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

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

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

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

Synonyms & Antonyms

Synonyms: Verb

belly creep grovel slide slither snake worm wriggle

Examples

Verb

//Does the baby crawl yet?
//We got down on our knees and crawled through a small opening.
//The baby crawled across the floor toward her mother.
//The soldiers crawled forward on their bellies.
//The snake crawled into its hole.
//They're doing construction on the road, so traffic is crawling.
//I worked late into the night, and it was 2 a.m. before I final

natch — MW · Shobdo