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sprawling

[sprawl]

Example Sentences Origin

verb (used without object)

to be stretched or spread out in an unnatural or ungraceful manner: The puppy's legs sprawled in all directions.

to sit or lie in a relaxed position with the limbs spread out carelessly or ungracefully: He sprawled across the bed.

to spread out, extend, or be distributed in a straggling or irregular manner, as vines, buildings, handwriting, etc.

to crawl awkwardly with the aid of all the limbs; scramble.

verb (used with object)

to stretch out (the limbs) as in sprawling.

to spread out or distribute in a straggling manner.

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Sprawling is always a great word to know.

So is quincunx. Does it mean:

an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.

a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes.

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noun

the act or an instance of sprawling; a sprawling posture.

a straggling array of something.

Origin:
before 1000; Middle English spraulen to move awkwardly, Old English spreawlian; cognate with Frisian (N dial.) spraweli

Related forms

sprawl·er, noun

sprawl·ing·ly, adverb

Synonyms
3. straggle, branch.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To sprawling

Example Sentences

Big, sprawling sculptures and rough collages recreate the.

She quickly learned her way around the sprawling campus of the.

Radical decentralisation has brought many benefits to the sprawling archipelago.

EXPAND

Big, sprawling sculptures and rough collages recreate the.

She quickly learned her way around the sprawling campus of the.

Radical decentralisation has brought many benefits to the sprawling archipelago.

His camera captures cagey cowhands and sprawling skies.

Sprawling blooms of cyanobacteria have swathed the surfaces of lakes and oceans around the world for billions of years.

It's a sprawling marsh and bog-prime bird habitat-with a spruce-tamarack forest and some prairie areas.

It saves space by getting the crop to grow up rather than sprawling out in the ground.

With its sprawling world and labyrinthine dungeons, that game would.

At the western end of the sprawling public housing project.

Lots of farms being converted to sprawling developments in areas that used to be way out in the boonies.

The site now houses a sprawling camp of several thousand, with free-food stands and a barber doing a busy trade.

Sprawling suburban areas differ from traditional cities in a number of important ways.

What replaces clunky, dangerous automobiles and toxic, sprawling asphalt roads is the exciting stuff.

After taking photos of the sprawling panorama, you will see a turquoise-bright sky that remains visible to the west.

But that's not all the benevolent alien refugee does in the sprawling.

What it got instead were sprawling subdivisions of cattle.

Manaus is sprawling city that is always humid and often grimy.

Its petrochemical plant is a sprawling palace of pipes.

Modern crocodilians have sprawling limbs and broad bodies, giving them a distinctive side-to-side swagger when walking on land.

Iguanodon sensu lato remained sprawling and home to many uneasy bedfellows.

Varieties range from immense, sprawling century plants to dainty sedums with leaves no larger than grains of rice.

That's when sprawling lines of figures started to be marketed as.

Sprawling as it is, his output has unmistakable signatures.

The deal would be a defiant gesture that the age of the sprawling financial conglomerate is not over.

Some of the ants live in robust, sprawling compounds of interconnected nests that are inhabited by many queens.

Here's a look at the sprawling gray market that gets some high and others heated.

Few cities have such a sprawling workforce-50 bargaining units in all-or so little money to pay for it.

Each deluge sent the men sprawling or scurrying for a handhold to keep from being washed overboard.

Word is that the singer likes to reenact the final escape scene in his sprawling flat.

In a building near a wind tunnel on the same sprawling site.

Galaxies are sprawling space systems composed of dust, gas, and countless stars.

Please add your favorites from the sprawling list in the comments.

Not bad-but in the same period the sprawling metropolis outside the city proper grew by well over a million.

Urban areas are cultural and technological epicenters ranging from quaint municipalities to sprawling megacities.

The service was a sprawling collection of computing resources that somehow acted as a.

But fearing the development of sprawling shanty towns around big cities, it has focused on developing smaller towns.

The gridlock and pollution, the sprawling malls and billboards of the recent boom years give way to the.

Wikipedia showed that the model could be used to create a sprawling and surprisingly comprehensive online encyclopedia.

For the oil industry, with its sprawling and hazardous facilities, keeping on top of the rot is a particularly difficult affair.

It's a sprawling white fortress perched high above a seemingly infinite valley.

Keeping such customers out of the world's sprawling financial system is becoming ever harder.

His photos portray what keeps drawing him back, from sprawling skies to blazing, jelly-colored bar lights.

There, sprawling in all directions, are gray concrete tenements.

COLLAPSE

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

sprawl

O.E. spreawlian "move convulsively," with cognates in the Scand. languages and N.Fris. spraweli, probably ult. from PIE base *sper- "to strew" (see sprout). Meaning "to spread or stretch in a careless manner" is attested from 1540s; of things, from 1745. The noun is first

EXPAND

attested 1719; meaning "straggling expansion of built-up districts into surrounding countryside" is from 1955.

COLLAPSE

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Matching Quote

"It is hereby earnestly proposed that the USA would be much better off if that big, sprawling, incoherent, shapeless, slobbering civic idiot in the family of American communities, the City of Los Angeles, could be declared incompetent and placed in charge of a guardian like any individual mental defective."

-Westbrook Pegler

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