asprawl

English

Etymology

From a- +‎ sprawl.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /əˈspɹɔːl/
• Rhymes: -ɔːl

Adjective

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,

     […] 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, 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,

     a vast drawing room asprawl with immense sofas, high backed chairs, two massive refectory tables and four chimney pieces

   • 2005, John Banville, The Sea‎, 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

asprawl

1. Sprawling over or across.
   • 1914, Larry Evans, chapter 11, in Once to Every Man‎, 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, 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,‎, 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, 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

• palwars