Other forms: scrawled, scrawling, scrawls
To scrawl is to write hastily and untidily. Scrawled a note, an illegible scrawl, scrawl across the page.
It says the writing was fast and the result is hard to read, which is a description rather than a judgement of the writer. Graffiti is scrawled and so is a shopping list. Note scribble, which is close and suggests smallness rather than sprawl; and that the origin of scrawl is uncertain.
1verbscrawlTo write hastily and untidily.
“He scrawled his phone number on the back of a napkin.”
scrawl is a hasty writing.
Scrawl is probably an alteration of a Middle English word meaning to sprawl or crawl. Its exact origin is uncertain.
Middle English
scraulen — to spread out one's limbs; sprawl
English, today
scrawl
Built from
Possibly from Middle English scraulen (“to spread out one's limbs; sprawl”), itself an alteration of spraulen (“to sprawl”) or craulen, crawlen (“to crawl”). Alternatively, from scrall, a contraction of scrabble.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire