acrawl en · ADJ
Etymology
From a- + crawl.
Meanings
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(not-comparable) Crawling.
1849, George Cupples, The Green Hand, Part 5, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 66, No. 408, October, 1849, […] 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, This [spirit] on the belly, on the shoulders that, / Of one another lay, and this acrawl / Transferred himself along the mournful path.
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(not-comparable) Full of or covered (with something that crawls or moves as if crawling).
Why, I’ll just bet you anything that place is acrawl with black widows.
1962, Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, London: Picador, published 1976, Part 3, p. 164:Rottenness / Peoples the world with creatures of its own, / And Rome’s acrawl with them.
1881, John Todhunter, The True Tragedy of Rienzi, Tribune of Rome, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, act IV, scene 2, page 99:His eyes were acrawl with the secrets of life. They were just squirming and wriggling there.
1912, Jack London, chapter 8, in Smoke Bellew, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, page 201: