scrawl

(skrôl)

v. scrawled, scrawl·ing, scrawls

v.tr.

To write hastily or sloppily.

v.intr.

To write something in a hasty or sloppy manner.

1. Sloppy, often illegible handwriting.

2. Something, such as a note, written hastily or sloppily.

[Perhaps from obsolete scrawl, to gesticulate, sprawl, from Middle English scrawlen, probably blend of sprawlen, to sprawl; see sprawl and craulen, to crawl; see crawl¹.]

scrawl′er n.

scrawl′y adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

scrawler - a writer whose handwriting is careless and hard to read

scribbler

writer - a person who is able to write and has written something

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References in periodicals archive

Wagner vowed to track down the heartless graffiti scrawler. PURLEASE.

Political correctness gone even more mad

The college leapt into action, offering "emergency counselling sessions" and Wagner vowed to track down the heartless graffiti scrawler.

STATESIDE; Letters

The documentary shows the artist giving a candid play-by-play of his meteoric rise from subway scrawler to Warhol darling and proprietor of The Pop Shop, a storefront in New York City dedicated to merchandise of all forms, emblazoned with his now infamous imagery, from crawling babies onward.

The cultural revolution of Keith Haring

She then tweeted an appeal to find the secret scrawler, with the message 'Rachel, who r u?' Before her gig, she popped over to Wirral to get her hair done and see her sister Tara, who owns a salon in Heswall, then it was time to go back to Liverpool where she treated crowds to a mass sing-a-long of some of the band's hits.

SHE was only here for [...]

A scrawler who runs around spray-painting various sites and buildings in Dubai makes poignant and sharp com- ments on the urban sphere around us.

Prose-Man made monsters

Other instances are less felicitous and more overdrawn: graffiti is said to "offer the illusion of existing both here and somewhere else, and of surviving one's own death" (156), sentiments not necessarily uppermost in the minds of every public scrawler, then or now.

Pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Middle Ages

Newcastle City Council and the regional development agency One NorthEast are among the sponsors of the Art Works Galleries, criticised for selling work by graffiti scrawler Inch.

Outrage as vandal gets paid for work