scrawl

• IPA^(key): /skɹɔːl/

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• 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.

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; (by extension) to swarm with crawling things
   • 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

scrawl in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913

• crawls