The Crawl Is the Fastest Stroke in Swimming
To crawl is to move on hands and knees, slowly. In swimming, confusingly, the crawl is the quickest stroke there is.
To crawl is to move slowly on hands and knees, or at a very low speed. Swimming reverses this completely: the front crawl is the fastest stroke in competition, and it is called a crawl because of the alternating overarm action, which looked to observers like crawling on the water. Speed had nothing to do with the name. A *pub crawl* uses the slow sense, moving from one bar to the next.
- To move on hands and knees. *The baby crawled.*
- To move slowly. *Traffic crawled.*
- A swimming stroke. *Front crawl.*
- Pub crawl — visiting bars in turn. *A pub crawl.*
- Crawler — a program that indexes the web. *A web crawler.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Verb | crawl | Crawl forward. |
| Past | crawled | It crawled. |
| Noun | crawl | A slow crawl. |
| Agent | crawler | A web crawler. |
| Compound | front crawl | Front crawl. |
- Traffic crawled along the motorway.Slow.
- She swam front crawl for the last length.Swimming.
- The site is indexed by web crawlers.Computing.
The four competitive strokes
- Front crawl — fastest, alternating overarm
- Butterfly — both arms together, hardest to sustain
- Backstroke — the only one swum face up
- Breaststroke — slowest, but the easiest to learn
- Freestyle races allow any stroke, so everyone swims front crawl
Middle English *craulen*, probably from Old Norse *krafla*, to claw or scrabble. The swimming sense dates from around 1900.
Why is the fastest stroke called the crawl?
From the alternating overarm action, which looked like crawling. The name describes the movement, not the speed.
Is freestyle the same as front crawl?
Not technically. Freestyle allows any stroke, but front crawl is fastest, so everyone chooses it.