1. A person who crawls or creeps along the ground
   "The toddler was an enthusiastic crawler, exploring every corner of the room";
   - creeper
    
2. A person who tries to please someone in order to gain a personal advantage
   "The boss was surrounded by crawlers who agreed with everything he said";
   - sycophant, toady, lackey, lacquey
    
3. Terrestrial worm that burrows into and helps aerate soil; often surfaces when the ground is cool or wet; used as bait by anglers
   "The gardener appreciated the crawlers' contribution to soil health";
   - earthworm, angleworm, fishworm, fishing worm, wiggler, nightwalker [N. Amer], nightcrawler [N. Amer], dew worm, red worm
    
4. A computer program that prowls the internet looking for publicly accessible resources that can be added to a database; the database can then be searched with a search engine
   "The web crawler indexed millions of web pages for the search engine";
   - spider, web crawler

Derived forms: crawlers

Type of: actor, adulator, computer program, computer programme [Brit], doer, flatterer, oligochaete, oligochaete worm, program, programme [Brit, Cdn], worker

Part of: class Oligochaeta, Oligochaeta

Encyclopedia: Crawler