sprawling

English

Verb

sprawling

1. present participle and gerund of sprawl

Adjective

sprawling (comparative more sprawling, superlative most sprawling)

1. That sprawls
2. Expansive; extensive

   a sprawling cityscape

   • 1972, Seymour Topping, “Departure”, in Journey Between Two Chinas‎, Harper & Row, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 101:

     We looked over Hoihow, a dirty sprawling city of 250,000 people, many of them living in old two-story buildings made of mud and white plaster, across the narrow Hainan Strait to the Liuchow Peninsula on the mainland.

   • 2021 July 28, Peter Plisner, “The race to the Games has begun”, in RAIL, number 936, page 54:

     It's close to the sprawling University of Birmingham campus and the ever-growing Queen Elizabeth Hospital site, which also includes a large medical school.

   • 2025 April 15, Gal Beckerman, “Looks Like Mussolini, Quacks Like Mussolini”, in The Atlantic‎:

     Donald Trump has decided instead that the NEH’s funds would be better spent on his own dream project: a sprawling sculpture garden with 250 likenesses of people he deems “American heroes.”

Translations

expansive, extensive

Latin: effūsus Spanish: expansivo (es), extensivo (es), extenso (es), extensional, expandiente, extendiente

Noun

sprawling (plural sprawlings)

1. The act of one who sprawls.
   • 1838, Colburn's New Monthly Magazine and Humorist, page 176:

     Having feasted our souls with this sublime spectacle, we ministered to the wants of the body by a plentiful breakfast, and about noon we commenced the descent, rendered ludicrous enough by various tumblings and sprawlings on the part of the more inexpert mountaineers.