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SPRAWLING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An ungainly posture with arms and legs spread about
Synonyms:
sprawl; sprawling
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("sprawling" is a kind of...):
attitude; position; posture (the arrangement of the body and its limbs)
Derivation:
sprawl (sit or lie with one's limbs spread out)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Spreading out in different directions or distributed irregularly
Example:
straggly hair
Synonyms:
rambling; sprawling; straggling; straggly
Classified under:
Similar:
untidy (not neat and tidy)
III. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb sprawl
Context examples:
Right in front, the doctor was pursuing his assailant down the hill, and just as my eyes fell upon him, beat down his guard and sent him sprawling on his back with a great slash across the face.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his entrance, struck in me what I can only describe as a disgustful curiosity) was dressed in a fashion that would have made an ordinary person laughable; his clothes, that is to say, although they were of rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large for him in every measurement—the trousers hanging on his legs and rolled up to keep them from the ground, the waist of the coat below his haunches, and the collar sprawling wide upon his shoulders.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
They were always crawling and sprawling toward it, and being driven back from it by their mother.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
In mercy I put a bullet through his skull, and he fell sprawling among the aloes.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The fat, red-faced gleeman, the listening group, the archer with upraised finger beating in time to the music, and the huge sprawling figure of Hordle John, all thrown into red light and black shadow by the flickering fire in the centre—memory was to come often lovingly back to it.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
By the first post I got my directed envelope with a dirty scrap of paper enclosed, on which was written with a carpenter's pencil in a sprawling hand:— Sam Bloxam, Korkrans, 4, Poters Cort, Bartel Street, Walworth. Arsk for the depite.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
The master with his toe helped one sprawling puppy toward him.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Trusses of straw had been thrown down along the walls, and reclining on them were some twenty or thirty archers, all of the Company, their steel caps and jacks thrown off, their tunics open and their great limbs sprawling upon the clay floor.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He was sprawling along between some bushes, when he heard a sharp intimidating cry.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
The other puppies came sprawling toward him, to Collie's great disgust; and he gravely permitted them to clamber and tumble over him.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
