acrawl

English

Etymology

From a- +‎ crawl.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɔːl

Adjective

acrawl (not comparable)

1. Crawling.
   • 1849, George Cupples, The Green Hand, Part 5, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 408, October, 1849,^[1]

     […] an’ be blowed if I knowed but I was buried in a churchyard, with the blasted worms all acrawl about me.

   • 1865, William Michael Rossetti (translator), The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Part I—The Hell, London: Macmillan, Canto 29, p. 208,^[2]

     This [spirit] on the belly, on the shoulders that, / Of one another lay, and this acrawl / Transferred himself along the mournful path.

2. Full of or covered (with something that crawls or moves as if crawling).

   Synonyms: crawling, teeming

   • 1881, John Todhunter, The True Tragedy of Rienzi, Tribune of Rome‎^[3], London: Kegan Paul, Trench, act IV, scene 2, page 99:

     Rottenness / Peoples the world with creatures of its own, / And Rome’s acrawl with them.

   • 1912, Jack London, chapter 8, in Smoke Bellew‎^[4], New York: Grosset & Dunlap, page 201:

     His eyes were acrawl with the secrets of life. They were just squirming and wriggling there.

   • 1962, Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest‎^[5], London: Picador, published 1976, Part 3, p. 164:

     Why, I’ll just bet you anything that place is acrawl with black widows.