asprawl

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English

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Etymology

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From a- +‎ sprawl.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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asprawl (not comparable)

  1. Sprawling; covered or filled (with something sprawling).
    • 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet, New York and London: Street & Smith, Part 2, Chapter 4, p. 129,[1]
      [] he saw [] a man lying flat upon his face upon the ground, with his arms and legs all asprawl.
    • 1951, William Styron, chapter 1, in Lie Down in Darkness[2], Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, page 24:
      [] Milton [] fully clothed, asprawl on the couch, lay snoring with a soft, blubbering sound,
    • 1984, J. P. Donleavy, De Alfonce Tennis, New York: Dutton / Seymour Lawrence, Part 5, p. 86,[3]
      a vast drawing room asprawl with immense sofas, high backed chairs, two massive refectory tables and four chimney pieces
    • 2005, John Banville, The Sea[4], London: Picador, Part 1, p. 113:
      [] I see a bicycle asprawl in abandon among the ferns, handlebars turned sideways and its front wheel jutting up at a somehow unseemly angle,

Preposition

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asprawl

  1. Sprawling over or across.
    • 1914, Larry Evans, chapter 11, in Once to Every Man[5], New York: H. K. Fly, pages 151–152:
      All through the night which followed her panic flight from the huge, heavy-footed figure that had groped out for her, called to her, and dropped asprawl her own small cloak in the doorway, Denny Bolton’s blood-soiled face and drunkenly reckless laugh had been with her,
    • 1947, James Barke, The Song in the Green Thorn Tree[6], London: Collins, Part 1, p. 78:
      Hundreds were asprawl the open space between the Cross and the kirkyard.
    • 1977, Ewan Clarkson, chapter 3, in The Badgers of Summercombe,[7], New York: Dutton, page 18:
      From a distance the wood looked like a cloak, flung carelessly asprawl the shoulder of the hill,
    • 1994, Edna O’Brien, House of Splendid Isolation[8], New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, page 147:
      [] she thought that not for anything would she wish him to see her naked thus, naked and cut, asprawl a windowsill.

Anagrams

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