scrawl

• IPA^(key): /skɹɔːl/

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  • (cot-caught merger) IPA^(key): /skɹɑːl/
• Rhymes: -ɔːl

Possibly from Middle English scraulen (“to spread out one's limbs; sprawl”), itself an alteration of spraulen (“to sprawl”) or craulen, crawlen (“to crawl”).

Alternatively, from scrall, a contraction of scrabble.

scrawl (countable and uncountable, plural scrawls)

1. Irregular, possibly illegible handwriting.
2. A hastily or carelessly written note etc.
3. Writing that lacks literary merit.
4. (countable, uncommon) A broken branch of a tree.
5. (uncommon) The young of the dog-crab.

scrawl (third-person singular simple present scrawls, present participle scrawling, simple past and past participle scrawled)

1. (transitive) To write something hastily or illegibly.

   She scrawled the main points onto her notepad

2. (intransitive) To write in an irregular or illegible manner.
3. (intransitive) To write unskilfully and inelegantly.
   • c. 1710-1730, Jonathan Swift (probably), Sandys's Ghost

     Though with a golden pen you scrawl.

• scrawl out

From Middle English scraulen (“to crawl”), itself an alteration of crawlen (“to crawl”). More at crawl.

scrawl (third-person singular simple present scrawls, present participle scrawling, simple past and past participle scrawled)

1. To creep; crawl; to move slowly, with difficulty, fearfully, or stealthily.
   • November 9, 1550, Hugh Latimer, A Sermon preached at Stamford:

     we will scrape and scrawl, and catch and pull to us all that we may get

   • 1797 (original possibly 1783), Josiah Relph, Poems by the Reverend Josiah Relph ... With the life of the author and a pastoral elegy on his death; by T. Sanderson, page 13:

     When I saw him scrawlen on the plain, My heart aw flacker'd for't, I was sae fain.

   • 1892, Clarke Tum Fowt Sketches, page 40, no. 3:

     T'poor pig what had just scrawled through t'bottom o' t'cart,

   • 1896, Francis Hindes Groome, Kriegspiel: The War Game, page 252:

     'Cut its throat,' I calls to him, but he didn't, just slashes its forepaw; but it dropt di-rekly, couldn't hardly scrawl out on the bank.'

“scrawl”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• crawls