sprawl

1. 1.

   sit or lie with one's limbs spread out

   Broadersitlie

   Narrowerspread-eagle
2. 2.

   go, come, or spread in a rambling or irregular way

   “Branches straggling out quite far”

   Synonymsstraggle

   Broaderspread

Other forms of sprawl

plural

sprawls·

past tense

sprawled·

present participle

sprawling·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about sprawl

What does sprawl mean?

sprawl means "an aggregation or continuous network of urban communities". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in sprawl?

sprawl has 1 syllable: sprawl. In IPA it is /ˈspɹɔl/.

What is another word for sprawl?

Close synonyms include conurbation, urban sprawl, sprawling, straggle. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is sprawl a common word?

sprawl is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.