grovels

verb

present tense third-person singular of grovel
1
as in cringes
to draw back or crouch down in fearful submission the way in which the abused dog would grovel whenever its owner came near

Synonyms & Similar Words

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2
as in crawls
to move slowly with the body close to the ground because of their anatomy, bats can only grovel while moving along the ground

Synonyms & Similar Words

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for grovels
  1. cringes
  2. crawls
  3. flinches
  4. creeps
  5. cowers
  6. snakes
  7. slides
Verb
  • Payton cringes at the mention of a sophomore slump, that defenses will figure out Nix.
    — Troy Renck, Denver Post, 6 Aug. 2025
Definition of cringes
Verb
  • Seltz’s system crawls hundreds of millions of pages a day, and returns results in under 200 milliseconds.
    — Jeremy Kahn, Fortune, 24 June 2026
  • At sunset, the city starts glowing around you while traffic crawls silently below.
    — Abby Montanez, Robb Report, 28 May 2026
Definition of crawls
Verb
  • Advertisement Throughout the narrative, Johnson never flinches in his portrayal of the wreck, unleashing footage of investigators approaching the car and the victims’ families.
    — Jake King-Schreifels, Time, 15 May 2026
  • DiVincenzo never flinches at adversity.
    — Marcus Thompson II, New York Times, 26 Apr. 2026
Definition of flinches
Verb
  • Misalignment creeps in simply because a high volume of choices are handed off to local leaders operating under distinct market pressures.
    — Peter Ross, Forbes.com, 25 June 2026
  • As our conversation extends into the hour mark, her hood creeps upward along the side of her face most visible to those around us.
    — José Criales-Unzueta, Vanity Fair, 23 June 2026
Definition of creeps
Verb
  • Anaia, feeling jilted that the letter was addressed only to Racine, cowers in hurt, like a street cat.
    — Doreen St. Félix, New Yorker, 1 June 2026
  • As his party watches silently and cowers, his intentions grow only more naked.
    — Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic, 19 May 2026
Definition of cowers
Verb
  • The New River, which snakes through West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina, may be one of the oldest river systems on earth.
    — Josh Laskin, Travel + Leisure, 3 July 2026
  • Morning mist coated the nearby Rhone River that snakes through the Alpine valley as worshippers flocked in.
    — ABC News, ABC News, 1 July 2026
Definition of snakes
Verb
  • Opportunities to earn more come your way as Jupiter slides into Leo today.
    — USA TODAY, USA Today, 30 June 2026
  • Veteran Tiffany Hayes slides in and picks up right where the starters left off, bringing the same pressure, the same discipline, the same pride on that end.
    — Nathan Canilao, Mercury News, 29 June 2026
Definition of slides
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Browse Nearby Words

groveling
grovels
groves
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Cite this Entry

“Grovels.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/grovels. Accessed 8 Jul. 2026.

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More from Merriam-Webster on grovels

Nglish: Translation of grovels for Spanish Speakers

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