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Glite Dictionary
front crawl

front crawl

1 3.7
A swimming stroke done face down where arms move alternately over the water and legs kick
  • noun
  • /frʌnt krɔl/
translation icon : crol
  • She enjoys teaching beginners how to do the front crawl effectively.

Examples

  • The coach emphasized the importance of breathing while performing the front crawl for better endurance.

  • Do you like to swim breaststroke, front crawl, butterfly or backstroke?

    The Lobster (2015)

  • This finding may shed some light on why Megan rolled in a nonsegmented pattern (hip and shoulder joint malaligned) when performing the front crawl.

    Academic text (1993)

  • During swim practice, I perfected my front crawl technique for the upcoming competition.

Synonyms

crawl
vsfront crawl
  • Specialized
4 4.7

A fast swimming stroke where you move one arm at a time and kick

is the competitive or formal name for that same stroke
Australian crawl
vsfront crawl
  • Specialized
1 4.6

A swimming stroke where the arms move one after the other above the water and the legs kick fast

is the general technical term without stressing freestyle usage

How Fast

front crawl
1 3.7
butterfly
19 5.8
backstroke
9 3.5
breaststroke
10 3.4
dog paddle
2 3.1

Surface Forms

front crawl singular
front crawls plural

Morphology

front + crawl

The meaning is directly derivable from combining 'front' (pertaining to the forward/front side) with 'crawl' (a swimming stroke), i.e. the crawl done on the front/face-down. This compositional pattern is straightforward and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should understand it.

Etymology

Front crawl comes from the image of a swimmer lying face down: the word front points to the front of the body and crawl describes the arm action, which looks like 'crawling' through the water. So, front crawl means the fast, face-down swimming stroke.