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
“Gregor, ride you on Vikus’s bat. Vikus, with me. Henry and Mareth, take one crawler each,” said Solovet.
From "Gregor the Overlander" by Suzanne Collins
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
However publishers are generally happy to allow crawlers from search engines, like Google, to access their sites, so that the search companies can in return can direct people to their content.
From BBC ● Jul. 1, 2025
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
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
Every one of them would have watched Boots and the crawlers fall into the river to stop the rats.
From "Gregor the Overlander" by Suzanne Collins
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.
