What's the difference between crawl and grovel?

Crawl


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To move slowly by drawing the body along the ground, as a worm; to move slowly on hands and knees; to creep.
  • (v. i.) to move or advance in a feeble, slow, or timorous manner.
  • (v. i.) To advance slowly and furtively; to insinuate one's self; to advance or gain influence by servile or obsequious conduct.
  • (v. i.) To have a sensation as of insect creeping over the body; as, the flesh crawls. See Creep, v. i., 7.
  • (n.) The act or motion of crawling; slow motion, as of a creeping animal.
  • (n.) A pen or inclosure of stakes and hurdles on the seacoast, for holding fish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In 30%, 60% and 100% plasma, crawling-like movements progressively increased, motility rose (at 30%) and then fell slightly (at 100%) while adhesiveness did not change.
  • (2) You’d think such a spry, successful man would busy himself with other things besides crawling into a pile of stuffed animals to scare his daughter’s date.
  • (3) Protesters crawl out from the tents they have pitched on the cobblestones and huddle in the cold around makeshift fires, as volunteers distribute hot tea and soup.
  • (4) Alonso, after hitting the wall and being catapulted airborne, landed upside down in his McLaren before crawling out of his car.
  • (5) Based on a single 20-s recovery VO2, the swimmers' VO2 max was correlated with performance in a 400-yd (365.8-m) front crawl swim.
  • (6) A decision to wean a child may be made if the child can crawl, walk, or has a good set of erupted milk teeth, even if the child has not reached the traditional weaning age of 20-24 months.
  • (7) A host of activities are on offer, from barbecue or pizza parties to bar crawls, and guests are welcome to visit the community projects that Backpack sponsors, including vegetable gardens, knitting and football for kids.
  • (8) They were the same two men who greeted Abu Ali as he crawled through a hole in the border fence to freedom on the night of 25 May 2015, just over four months after he had entered Isis territory.
  • (9) Some were wearing nappies despite being of school age, and appeared to crawl upstairs using their hands rather than walking.
  • (10) Wanda Mintz said her nephew tried to crawl away but could not move because of his wounds.
  • (11) What made this so troubling he said, is that digital spiders could then crawl the web and find every picture in the public domain and match it with an identity.
  • (12) So all these things are going through your head as I'm on my belly crawling to get underneath this shutter.
  • (13) She stumbled to her door, but found she could not walk out; she had to crawl as the ground swayed beneath her.
  • (14) The Tower’s steps are covered in golden slime, and on its walls crawls a “rich greenlike moss” that inscribes letters and words on the masonry – before entering and authoring the bodies of the explorers themselves.
  • (15) The DOJ generally has to go crawling to Wall Street, tentatively striking deals that won't hurt financial reputations too badly and the bottom line hardly at all.
  • (16) I remember crawling out of it – because by that time I was too weak to walk, but I couldn’t bear to stay among the corpses any longer – and bumping into a neighbour who was as surprised to see me as I was her.
  • (17) Elevated concentrations of the soil fungi were significantly (P = 0.05) associated with the dirt floor, crawl-space type of basement.
  • (18) (Oh wow, note to self: trademark a version of American Football where players have to crawl or walk on their hands.)
  • (19) In the transition from quiescent state to crawling, the pattern recorded in nerves and connectives changes from short-duration bursts in many units to the 60-100 sec cycle of events recorded during tethered crawling in the semi-intact snail.
  • (20) These results, interpreted through Ayres' sensory integration theory and applied to current occupational therapy practice, support Farber's hypothesized importance of early crawling experience in the development of sensory and motor systems of the body and general motor skill development.

Grovel


Definition:

  • (adv.) To creep on the earth, or with the face to the ground; to lie prone, or move uneasily with the body prostrate on the earth; to lie fiat on one's belly, expressive of abjectness; to crawl.
  • (adv.) To tend toward, or delight in, what is sensual or base; to be low, abject, or mean.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Lord Young , the prime minister's enterprise adviser, was forced to issue a grovelling apology last night after he claimed most Britons "had never had it so good during this so called recession".
  • (2) And instead of celebrating bumper peak viewing figures of more than 20m for the England match, ITV was instead having to issue a grovelling apology.
  • (3) If they want me to get down and grovel on the floor; no, never.
  • (4) I was showing a person groveling to take back a statement made long ago!
  • (5) This week his previous grovelling before communist China over steel tariffs has returned to haunt him.
  • (6) From 1969 to 1985 he also wrote the Grovel gossip column in Private Eye, whose then editor, Richard Ingrams, dubbed him the Greatest Living Englishman despite, or because of, more writs.
  • (7) It didn't happen and, as Simon Jenkins put it , "Cameron could hardly have grovelled lower.
  • (8) "With her blonde hair and her ability to ask the most grovelling questions, she is rapidly becoming the female Fabricant – or at least Fabricant Mark I, before he stopped crawling and became an elder statesman."
  • (9) There's even a slot called Friday Boss, in which the programme's usual rules of engagement are set aside and its reporters grovel before the corporate idol.
  • (10) Bashir immediately erupted in a ball of fiery rage, cutting Hardin off, refusing to let him speak, repeatedly demanding an apology for this grievous assault on the integrity of a military man, and then – when Hardin failed sufficiently to grovel for the crime of speaking ill of Gen Dempsey – Bashir kicked Hardin off the show by abruptly ending the interview.
  • (11) The Countess of Wessex, 2001 Sophie Wessex reportedly had to write grovelling apologies to Prince Charles, Tony Blair and William Hague after Mahmood lured her into making highly embarrassing comments about them.
  • (12) Some MPs are saying the better solution would be to fine them, rather than to require them to grovel in front of the highest court in the land.
  • (13) Organisers of a conference celebrating the best and brightest businesspeople in the north of England have issued a grovelling apology over lack of female representation.
  • (14) HSBC has made mistakes in the past, and for them I am very sorry,” his successor Douglas Flint, the former long-serving finance director, told shareholders in July 2012: “Candidly, in particular areas we fell short of the standards that I, my colleagues, our regulators, customers, and investors expect.” A grovel was the only position Flint could adopt.
  • (15) The response from architects grovelling for the fame of a tower in their CVs is that they are "only obeying orders" from clients, and that tall buildings are "the future".
  • (16) For the 100th time, I never “mocked” a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him “groveling” when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad.
  • (17) There, in all its hilarious glory, is the joke by Jimmy Carr that was transmitted on Loose Ends at the weekend, for the broadcast of which the BBC has issued a grovelling apology.
  • (18) It sees him mock his own grovelling appearance on BBC Newsnight in November, when he admitted that Dapper Laughs was “a type of comedy that I should not have been doing”.
  • (19) Michael Richards Made a grovelling apology over his 2006 rant in which he used the N-word, paradoxically on David Letterman's show.
  • (20) It said the intent was to demonstrate a resolute stand with places that share America's values – a hint at the Republican contender's claim that Obama has let down Washington's friends abroad while offering grovelling apologies to its enemies.