crawler
Americannoun
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crawlers
plural
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a person or thing that crawls.
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Digital Technology. web crawler.
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Also called crawler tractor. any of various large, heavy vehicles or machines that are propelled on endless belts or tracks, especially as used in construction.
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Often crawlers. a garment with long pants, short sleeves or suspender straps, and sometimes feet for a baby who does not yet walk.
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Australian Slang. sycophant.
noun
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slang a servile flatterer
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a person or animal that crawls
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an informal name for earthworm
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a computer program that is capable of performing recursive searches on the Internet
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(plural) a baby's overalls; rompers
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of crawler
1640–50; 1925–30 crawler for def. 4; crawl 1 + -er 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Traveling at a top speed of just 0.82 mph, the crawler moved the massive Moon rocket steadily toward the launch pad.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 19, 2026
When the crew of the colonization mission discover that their new home, an ice planet called Niflheim, is inhabited by armadillo-like crawler creatures, they wonder what to do about this unanticipated roadblock in their efforts.
From Salon ● Mar. 25, 2025
Not another cooking game, but instead a new take on a dungeon crawler where you can team up with your friends to survive in a twisted reality show competition.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2024
Publishers could also try to protect their content from Google by forbidding its web crawler from sharing any content snippets from their sites.
From New York Times ● Jun. 1, 2024
I nod frantically, like a bobble-head strapped to a rock crawler.
From "Starfish" by Akemi Dawn Bowman
Meanwhile, Time is helping advertisers get their messages in front of bots, using a sort of Trojan horse approach—creating text-based ads that regular readers never see but that AI crawlers might find.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
If there’s been an even more difficult task than policing predatory A.I. crawlers, it’s been keeping Reddit interactions personal, healthy, and as bot-free as possible.
From Slate ● Jun. 23, 2025
Much of the material used to develop generative AI models has been pulled from a massive range of web sources using bots and crawlers, which automatically extract site data.
From BBC ● Jun. 20, 2025
When Adam Cooper came across an old junkyard filled with RVs and rock crawlers in South Central, he immediately saw its potential.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2024
The furry crawlers were a much larger species of spider than Charlotte had been.
From "George" by Alex Gino
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
