crawling

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The slow, low movement of a creature or thing that pulls itself along a surface.

   The crawling of the wounded soldier across the open field was painful to watch.

   We followed the steady crawling of the beetle up the rough tree trunk.

   Similarcreeping

   Note

   A true noun, unlike the verb's gerund: it takes adjectives rather than adverbs, and it has a plural, crawlings. The plural invites figurative use. Dickens, writing in 1840–41, sets the law's rare "eagle flights" against its "slippery and eel-like crawlings", so the word stands for devious, low maneuvering rather than bodily motion. In literal use it usually pairs with of and the mover: the crawling of a beetle.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle of crawl.

   The soldiers were crawling through the mud toward the ridge.

   A spider was crawling slowly up the windowpane.

   Note

   One -ing spelling does two jobs. After a form of be it builds the progressive (the baby is crawling), and in a noun position it works as a gerund (crawling comes before walking). Nearly every use is intransitive; only the swimming sense takes an object. Watch crawling with, where the subject is the place, not the creatures: the cellar was crawling with mice.

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